I gave this talk on November 2, 2023.

This is Case 10 in The Gateless Gate and its verse:

The priest Yuean (Geban) said to a monk, “Xizhong (Keichu) made a hundred carts.  If you take off both wheels and the axle, what would be vividly apparent?”

The Verse

Where the wheel revolves,

Even a master cannot follow it;

The four cardinal half-points, above, below, 

North, south, east, west.

The prominent Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron has a popular book titled When Things Fall Apart.  I’m almost certain I read it decades ago, but it’s been so long I honestly can’t recall, much less remember what the book says if I did read it.  I suppose this proves her point:  Things truly do fall apart, like our memories.  

Presently it seems like the world is falling apart.  Wars in Europe and the Middle East are inflaming conflicts here that, so far, are mostly rhetorical.  Let’s hope they stay mostly rhetorical.  January 6th, awful as it was, gave us just a glimpse of how bad things really could get.  Then there is a climate crisis, a teen mental health crisis, an opioid epidemic, global recession fears, migration crises, mass shootings . . . I could go on.  There is always good news, and I suppose each era brings convulsions of some sort, but still it feels like the wheels may have come off the cart for good this time, and the axle with them.

It’s tempting to make this a talk about impermanence.  That’s one too-obvious Dharma point to make.  Things are always falling apart in a sense.  And, of course, there are always highs and lows; no highs without lows; and, viewed from the perspective of the Absolute, ultimately no highs or lows.  True as all these insights may be, they don’t offer much reassurance or other forms of support when things are especially bleak.

What else is there to say in times like these?  And what to do?  It shouldn’t be surprising that we may feel disoriented and uncertain, perhaps even completely lost, when things seem to be falling apart all around us, inside us, or both.

Our practice teaches to and helps us meet experience, whatever it is.  Not to separate from our experience, outside or inside—and there isn’t really a separate outside and inside.  Just this.

One image that comes to mind for me right now is standing in front of one of those maps we find dispersed around cities or shopping malls with an arrow pointing to the spot where I’m standing.  “You are here,” it says.

At times like this I feel the need to acknowledge that things are a mess and I am right here in it, rather than looking away or sugar-coating a bad situation.  Our practice can help us orient and stabilize ourselves even in turbulent times, and acknowledging the turbulence seems like a sane way to begin to find our balance.  I find just connecting to experience—noting and acknowledging what seems broken, without minimizing or amplifying it—can be a helpful place to start.

Then what?  Well, I suppose it depends.   Our practices also helps us to be less reactive, or more appropriately reactive; to sense and respond to what the situation requires.  The situation itself is the map, suggesting where to go next and how to get there.  Maybe we put the wheels and axle back on the cart.  Or we pull the cart like a sled.  Or we build a new cart.  Or we just pause; wait; leave space; do nothing for now. Maybe a cart is not what we’ll need going forward.

Yunmen’s verse accompanying this koan is lovely and wise, as ever:

Where the wheel revolves,

Even a master cannot follow it;

The four cardinal half-points, above, below, 

North, south, east, west.

The master can’t follow the cart—this very being-time, that is—because she’s right here with it, in it, as it.  We are part and parcel of our experience; part of this whole world that’s on fire.  We don’t control all that’s arising in our presence, let alone on other continents, but we often can influence our own and other’s experience at least weakly, and sometimes even strongly.  We also have some agency over our response to what’s arising—to direct our arising response to what’s arising around and within us—or at least the potential to develop some agency.  Practice can help us develop more agency.  

I’m not just talking about meditation practice.  I’m talking about all of it.  Bowing as we enter the Zendo.  Playing instruments and chanting.  Lighting and placing a new stick of incense after the prior one burns down.  Each of these acts is an opportunity simultaneously to meet and respond to and co-create arising experience, and to do so with reverence.  

“Realizing this, our ancestors gave reverent care to animals, birds, and all beings,” we chanted tonight.  We’re not talking about realizing this as an intellectual idea.  Realizing as making it real.  Realizing as manifesting.  Realizing as doing; as offering an appropriate response.  

The Germans have a great way of saying goodbye:  Mach’s gut.  Make it good.

The wheels are off the cart, and the axle, too.  We are here.  What will we do?  What would it mean to make it good at this time?  Can we?