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My landlord has an olive press. I never thought of pressing olives before, but I’m sure if someone had said the word “olive press” to me, I would have thought of something like a big juicer or a big panini maker. In my village, the olive press consists of two separate machines, actually. The first machine is a large shallow bowl with a large stone wheel with grooves in the center. When the olives get smashed under the wheel, the liquid falls down the grooves, and what is left is a large pile of mashed olives. The wheel is turned by way of mule. The second machine is a large basket inside of a metal squeezer. The mashed olives are placed inside the basket, and the squeezer is turned so that it mashes all of the liquid out of it, where it pools into a container buried halfway beneath the ground. Once the liquid is drained, the remains of the olives are placed back in the shallow bowl, where they are pressed again. My landlord told me that they transfer the mashed up olives back and forth about three times. They make about one thousand liters during the initial picking, which can bring in a lot of money for a village of one hundred people.
I watched as my landlord and his brother “worked” the machines. (By work, I mean told the mule to keep moving.) I watched as the mule walked in circles around the bowl, and I saw that she had a patch over her left eye. My landlord told me that it was to keep her from getting dizzy. I nodded my head and looked back at the mule. I wondered how long of a memory she had? It was her left eye that would be able to stay focused on one point, namely, the wheel. But that eye was blinded, and so she always saw a carousel of events on the outside circle of her experience. I wondered if she remembered me every time I was in her field of vision, or if I was a new person to meet every time. Did she always think the chicken coop was filled with new chickens, or did she know them? Did she recognize the woven baskets that lined the mud brick wall? Or did she remember it all and instead try to find new things with each go around? Maybe she noticed that I was in a different position from the last time.
My mind wandered. I knew that somewhere, there was an analogy in what was happening. That’s when I thought of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. Every being is trapped on the wheel, but we all are blinded to that fact because of ignorance. My life is like the mule, and the olives are our karmic actions. We keep the wheel moving, and our karmic actions all get crushed under the wheel: black olives, red olives, green olives, full olives, shriveled olives; they all eventually get crushed by the wheel. Rarely, an olive will fly out of the bowl, where it will simply whither away. Sometimes, the mule will stop, and that’s when karma stops. Our actions no longer serve as a continuation of the Wheel of Life, pressing our karmic actions into further lives, just as when the mule stops, the wheel no longer presses the olives.
I then looked at my landlord, who wore a saffron colored jump suit. I have realized that my mind either settles deeply on something, or it flies madly about like a flag in the wind. I watched as he circled the bowl, over and over again, only to shout at the mule every few minutes. I imagined him as a gyoja of Mount Hiei. He has been doing this every year since he became a young adult, just like his father did, and his father before him, and do on and so on, in an uninterrupted chain of time going back generations. He was literally walking in his father’s footsteps. I imagined that as he moved around the bowl his shouting to the mule became his mantra, and the mantra slowly filled out an invisible rosary. The gyoja of Mount Hiei, in order to become an abbot, must complete both a 100 day and 1000 day challenge that consists of running in between 40 and 84 kilometers per day. If they cannot complete this challenge, they must commit suicide by stabbing or hanging themselves. I imagined my landlord, thinking that this wasn’t just a job, this was an integral part of his life. An unbroken chain of life starting with his ancestors. But was his way to enlightenment to continue the path, unreservedly, or was it to stop the mule entirely? That was where my analogy broke down.
time passed, and the landlord’s mother came out with some deep fried bread and tea. He stopped, as did his brother, and we all sat down together to eat and drink. As the oil soaked bread slipped through my fingers, I thought to myself Maybe you don’t need an analogy for this. Maybe this just is. Maybe your landlord is just pressing olives. Maybe the mule is just being a mule. Stop complicating things. They finished and got back to work. I listened to the sound of the wheel, the heavy stone against the bowl, to the sound of the olives being squished, and to the sound of the mule’s hooves hitting the dirt. I stayed for a little while longer, and went back to my own house.
Maybe that’s why my meditation has been hitting a wall, lately. Maybe I have been trying to hard to find a connection to everything that I do not stop my mind enough to appreciate the separateness of things. At least, that will give me a new exercise for meditation in the coming days.
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