I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen evening talk on December 18, 2025. A recording follows the text. 

Tonight, I want to talk about different modes and styles of Zen practice and teaching. I’ll give you the conclusion up front. The point I want to make is that there are different ways we can practice and different strengths students and teachers may have. And it’s all good. The many ways are the Way. 
 

I want to use two koans from the collection Entangling Vines to illustrate this point. I’ll read them and then I’ll say a bit more. 

This is Case 78, Mazu’s Moon Viewing: 

Once Baizhang Huaihai, Xitang Zhizang, and Nanquan Puyuan were attending Mazu as they viewed the autumn moon. Mazu asked them what they thought of the occasion. 

Xitang said, “It’s ideal for a ceremony.” 

Baizhang said, “It’s ideal for training.” 

Nanquan shook his sleeves and walked away. 

Mazu said, “Zhizang has gained the teachings, Huaihai has gained the practice, but Puyuan alone has gone beyond all things.” 

This is Case 123, Comparing Three Students of Linji: 

In the “Zen Master Huiran of Sansheng Temple” chapter of the Treasury of Bright Light, Juzhou Baotan says: 

The disciples Baoshou Zhao, Sansheng Huiran, and Xinghua Cunjiang under Linji were much like the disciples Baizhang Huaihai, Guizong Zhichang, and Nanquan Puyuan under Mazu. 

Baizhang resembled Mazu in his strength of character; Guizong resembled Mazu in his depth of talent; and Nanquan resembled Mazu in his greatness of mind. In the same way, Baoshou resembled Linji in his sincerity, Sansheng resembled Linji in his keenness, and Xinghua resembled Linji in his subtlety and depth. 

The sincerity of Baoshou is seen in how he applied the staff to the clear blue sky, and in how he struck Rivet-and-Shears Hu. The keenness of Sansheng is seen in his exchange with Yangshan Huiji, and also in the way he struck Xiangyan, pushed over Deshan, and extinguished Linji’s True Dharma Eye. The subtlety and depth of Xinghua is seen in his scattering of pearls in the purple-curtained room, and in the way he waved his hand two times in front of the monk’s face. Though they each gained but a single of the master’s qualities, still Linji’s Zen has lasted a hundred generations. If all his qualities were grasped, how could Linji’s Zen fail to flourish for a thousand or ten thousand generations? 

What always troubles me is that if the stick and shout are not applied to the present generation, Linji’s Dharma will decline. Why should there be anything that later generations cannot do if they but make the effort? The problem is that their teachers have not yet fully penetrated Linji’s Dharma. It is like drinking water and knowing for oneself whether it is cold or warm. Xinghua’s stick of incense—this was gained through hardship and effort. Therefore Linji’s Dharma flourishes. 

Ceremony and text, meditation and koan practice, and just living one’s life without fussing too much about such things. Going beyond as Puyuan did.  

We’re here practicing Zen altogether in part because another religious tradition has similar wisdom around the idea that there are many different modes of practice, and it’s all good. I’m speaking here about contemplative Christianity and the Trappist monastic order specifically. Many of you have met my teacher, Kevin Hunt, who is 91 or so. He’s been a monastic, a Trappist, since his late teens. And, lucky for us, he joined the Trappist order, which is the strictest and most austere monastic order in the world, certainly within a Catholicism, which has most of the monastic orders existing in the world under its roof.  

The reason we’re lucky is the Trappists have this interesting idea about prayer. Prayer can be anything, and as a Trappist, you have complete freedom to pray as you pray. So if the way you seek the divine, if prayer for you is basketball, then during prayer time you play basketball. That’s not what most people do. But, within reason, however you’re called to the One, to unity, to prayer, it’s respected. 

Kevin took up Zen practice early in his journey as his form of prayer. There’s a story there. He was called to silent contemplation, but he kept nodding off in the pew when he’d tried to sit silently to prayer. He’s fall asleep. He stumbled across a book on Zen, saw people sitting cross legged, and figured he’d give that a try. It worked! That was how his initial interest in Zen was sparked. The story goes on, of course. 

We might all be doing Zen practice if the Trappist order didn’t have such a permissive tradition or didn’t honor diversity in that way. But we might not be doing it all here together. I may never have become a Zen teacher.  In our first koan, Mazu seems to be saying that going beyond his words is better than ritual, better than studying the teachings, better than meditation, better than koan practice. But I don’t really think that’s his point. I think he’s pointing to discovery of the fullness of emptiness, which Puyuan represents, as the ultimate purpose of all of our practices: ritual, studying texts and teachings, introspection practice, and everyday life is practice. Some of us gravitate more towards one dimension of practice than others, but it’s all practice and it’s all good. We can and hopefully will come to know it all as expressions of the fullness of emptiness. 

The second koan illustrates, for me, how different people, different students and teachers, have different temperaments and different positive qualities. Different strengths. And that’s okay. 

Mazu embodied strength of character, depth of talent, and greatness of mind. Linji embodied some different qualities: keenness, sincerity, subtlety and depth. Each of three students of each of these teachers embodied one of their three qualities. There are rare personalities like Mazu and Linji who have many positive traits rolled up into one. But most of us don’t have multiple superpowers. Each of these students that only had one of superpower went on to become an important teacher in his own right, transmitting the Dharma. The point of the koan is that the Dharma continues and hopefully flourishes through the ages if each of us develops and shares our strengths with others, and if others make themselves receptive to what each of us has to share.  

Taken together, these two koans illustrate the reality that it takes a village to practice. 
They illustrate how we’re all part of and co-constructing that village. Each of us needs different things. We resonate on somewhat different frequencies. None of us can be all things to all people all the time. We need to look to different sources of wisdom and teaching. It takes different types of contributions to make a community. I really encourage all of us to deeply realize this about teachers, in particular. In the Zen tradition, individuals and communities and teachers themselves can get into a lot of trouble if they idolize teachers too much.  

Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses; things we’re good at and things we’re less good at; different temperaments. And it’s all good. Together our frequencies can mix in ways that make music or that make that annoying scratchy static sound. It all depends on knowing and accepting and coordinating and appreciating what each of us, and what each of the various forms and elements of practice that make up our tradition, have to offer.

Together we make sangha: community. That’s a really important idea across all the world’s ancient wisdom traditions. Islam has the notion of the Umma, which is kind of our idea of sangha. The Christian tradition talks about the church this way, or the Body of Christ as sangha. In our tradition, we see deeply, we go beyond, by realizing the unity of the three wheels: giver, receiver, and gift.