The Plumbing Dharma Tells Me So

Dharma: The belief, in Hinduism and Buddhism, in a righteous path, way of living, an ethical system, largely found within oneself, through contemplation, rather than in the external world.

- Discovery Guides

Dharma: derived from the Sanskrit root "dhr" meaning to hold up, to carry, to bear, to sustain. The word "dharma" refers to that which upholds or sustains the universe.

- Sanskrit.org

If you have ever traveled in Asia or Indonesia, you probably have a few good stories to tell about using the indigenous restrooms. But in case you have yet to cross that off your list of lifelong dreams, you may be unfamiliar with the plumbing design in that corner of the world. Let me bring you up to speed.

Essentially, the Asian toilet is a porcelain pan with a drain attached, presumably, to some sort of pipe that carries sewage far, far away. The pan is prefabricated, comes in a rainbow of colors and sits even with the floor around it. In urban areas, you are more likely to find a water tank attached, but in the hinterlands, flushing is commonly accomplished with a bucket and a dipper.

The pan works perfectly fine from a sanitary standpoint as long as it's being maintained, so don't fret yourself over cleanliness concerns. You're just as likely to be horrified by the toilets in a Ross-Dress-for-Less, than by anything you'll see behind a snack-shack in southern Thailand.

To use said facilities, you straddle the thing and sit on your heels, or as close to your heels as you can get if you're not very flexible. Navigating your potty time successfully requires both the coordination and the muscular thighs of Baryshnikov (in his leaping years). If you are an average Westerner with the flexibility of rebar and knees as creaky as a rusted hasp, relieving yourself may be an aquatic adventure.

The really distinguishing feature for Westerners, however, is not the shape of the throne...it's the typical lack of paper. That dipper and bucket are often meant for more than just flushing - they're meant to rinse your personal plumbing parts off as well. Ballet dancers, gymnasts and yoga practitioners can, probably, avoid the hazards inherent in using the dipper without a lifetime of training. But for the rest of us, those first few visits to the Asian pan are humbling.

So many things can go awry while you're squatting, off-balance, stretching for a bucket that is always six inches farther than your reach, keeping your shorts/skirt/pants dry while sloshing your lower half with a dipperful of cold water AND trying to sluice it to the places where it will actually achieve its objective that, well...let's just say that most travelers go around damp from the waist down until they build up their quads.

But, by golly, after repeating the process several times a day, you are not only clean, you become mindful of an important truth - you discover that your own plumbing system isn't much more evolved than a sea cucumber's. Humans may be a noble piece of work, spiritually speaking, but on the physical plane, we are best described as one long tube. Stuff goes in and stuff goes out. Asian toilets have a way of confronting you with your place in the biological order.

We Westerners put a lot of effort into pretending that we are far removed from the muck of life. We don't like to be reminded that we are subject to the same laws of growth and decay as any organism. Thus, we devote ourselves to maintaining a pristine exterior, by keeping our fur, skin, and claws glossy and groomed. If all the buffing, waxing, shaving, shampooing, conditioning, coloring, styling and emollients aren't sufficient to create curb appeal, some of us even have bits cut off, sucked out or reconstructed to become smaller in some places and larger in others. Anything to keep the surface of our human-suit looking pure and fresh, rather than reveal it as the composting organic sack that it actually is.

Most of our disguises manage to convince one another. We see plenty of examples so shimmering that we are easily fooled by the mirage. But there are still parts of the human body that are so functional, so primitive, that they cannot be glamorized despite our best efforts.

To illustrate, a British anthropologist by the delightful name of Nigel Barley brought a group of Indonesian villagers to England in the 1980s. The men had been invited to build a replica of their traditional meeting house for a London museum, and were excited by both the prospect of flying on a plane for the first time and the opportunity to meet elegant English women.

The plane ride was scary and wildly exciting. And the women were much admired until the men began to realize that English ladies and gentlemen do not properly rinse with a dipper after using the toilet. Rather, they only sort of blot with thin tissue paper. The men discussed this at length with Barley as they tried to overcome their revulsion for women who were so outwardly attractive, but whose hygiene left so much to be desired.

Finally, one man shook his head, sadly, and said, "Princess Diana, too?" Yes, Barley acknowledged. Even Princess Diana, that perfect rose of English womanhood, probably used toilet paper, too. Underneath the exquisite gowns and flashing jewels, Diana had a plumbing system. And, to the Indonesian mind, she wasn't cleaning it as well as could be hoped.

After reading that, whenever I saw magazine photographs of the Princess attending a charity gala or cruising the Mediterranean on a luxury yacht, I would remember those Indonesian builders. I would visualize Diana trying to navigate an Asian toilet (or any toilet) while holding onto her tiara and keeping the hem of her Versace gown out of the puddle.

In a blink, all of the glitter and privilege that she represented would vanish and her true identity as just another organism would emerge.

It was very Buddhist of me, really.

The Buddhist tradition places a lot of emphasis on seeing life as a constant process of change. Biologically speaking, this is accurate. All life forms are in a perpetual cycle of growth and decay. Humans, being what we are, are inclined to avoid that truth, and we crave things and experiences that promise to distract us from the conscious awareness that everyone and everything here on our Big Blue Bus is transient.

We are caught in a perpetual cycle of wanting, chasing, attaining, losing and suffering from the loss of everything that is eternally slipping away from our grasp. Then, to recover from the crushing disappointment of wrecking the Lexus or losing the Lover, we go out and covet more of the same.

The recent reeling of the markets is a perfect illustration. Across our nation's television screens and newspapers we saw the fortunes of obscenely wealthy individuals and organizations take a dive and drag the country under as well. There didn't seem to be much pausing for quiet reflection among the bigger players...no sitting under a Bearish Bodhi Tree and asking, "Now that I am down to my last $500 million and have realized the impermanence of financial success, how do I end my perpetual cycle of suffering?"

I, on the other hand, learned that the Secretary of the Treasury has (or had) a personal wealth of $700 million. This had me thinking about my own rung on the socio-economic ladder and I had to face the disheartening truth that I am a monetarily worthless person. I couldn't help but think that Secretary Paulson, et. al., must be happier losing several hundred million dollars than I am not having even a few million to lose.

But being broke, I have plenty of time for the sort of contemplation that eludes my economic superiors. Yeah, me.

While I meditated on my enduring poverty, it suddenly occurred to me that I have been on my spiritual path since my first encounter with an Asian toilet. To wit, every person I see is mostly a digestive tract covered by a semi-permeable membrane.

No matter how outwardly attractive or intellectually brilliant, no matter how much status, professional success, wealth and political power the Wall Street Gang has attained, their interior is a roiling sea of splashing acids and feasting bacteria. We humans are little more than mobile septic tanks that need repeated dumping. Carbon-based recreational vehicles, if you will. Despite all of Secretary Paulson's money and all of my non-money, we both have innards not a whole lot more sophisticated than an earthworm's.

I think of this realization as The Plumbing Dharma - the Universal Truth that underlies all reality.

If you look at a diagram of the human torso, you can see that most of our core is taken up with a digestive system that includes about twenty-one parts. The tract itself is made up of mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine - also called the colon - rectum, and anus. Two "solid" digestive organs, the liver and the pancreas, produce digestive juices that reach the intestine through small tubes called ducts. The gallbladder stores the liver's digestive juices until they are needed in the intestine.

When you sit down to your Market Chef crab cakes or tuck into your Rose's baked eggs, they are not in a form that the body can use as nourishment. All food and liquids must be broken down to smaller molecules of nutrients before they can be absorbed into the blood and carried throughout the body to nourish cells and provide energy.

Digestion is a sloppy process that, essentially, starts with a blob of wet pulp in the mouth. The chemical and mechanical processes of digestion begin with the grinding of the teeth and the enzymatic action of the saliva. The chewed mass is pushed down into a pink squeezey bag by the tongue and muscular contractions of the esophagus. Food ends its incredible journey as an unpleasant brown blob extruded back out into the world.

Now add to that the renal system which includes the kidneys and ureters, bladder and urethra whose work is to both filter things like salt out of the body, as well as regulate the amount of water in the body. When all the parts of the excretory system are fitted together, we can see that on the inside, we're mostly just one complex wastewater line. The smallish lungs, heart and reproductive organs have to fight for space around the twenty to twenty- five foot boa that makes up the small and large intestines.

There is nothing in this process that is the stuff of poetry, although it IS the stuff of life. An average person fortunate enough to have access to groceries moves about fifty tons of food through their body in a lifetime (politicians, of course, process considerably more, particularly in the weeks immediately preceding November).

Once you embark on mindful contemplation of The Plumbing Dharma, you will soon experience its life-transforming influence. This awareness is so powerful that, before long, it will not be easy for anyone to impress you, manipulate you, intimidate or seduce you. You will see beneath the facade of every human being no matter who they are or who they pretend to be. You will not see into their heart or soul or essential godliness, but into their guts.

And, therein, lies true freedom from the suffering that comes from illusion. The Plumbing Dharma tells me so.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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