I gave this talk on November 25, 2025, at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit. A recording follows the text.
This is case 14 in The Gateless Gate, Nanquan Kills the Cat. Eric, cover your ears. For those of you who haven’t heard this koan, be forewarned. There’s one gruesome bit, particularly if you’re a cat lover like Eric.
Nan-ch’üan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nan-ch’üan cut the cat into two.
That evening, Chao-chou returned from the outside and Nan-ch’üan told him what happened. Chao-chou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head and walked out.
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”
You’ll be glad to know most subsequent Zen teachers through time maintain that Nanquan just mimicked killing the cat. I guess we’ll never know.
What were the monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about? Something speculative was dividing them, no doubt. Does the cat have Buddha nature or not?
But I want to talk about our internal divisions. About ambivalence. Sometimes we have quarreling eastern and western halls within ourselves. Two impulses or perspectives, each of which seems to have worth, which tug at us, and we experience them as incompatible. Our heart and mind is divided.
From a Zen perspective, it’s the reification, the concretization of this dividedness—our captivation by it, our captivity to it—that kills the cat, not Nanquan’s blade. Nonquan’s cut is an expression of oneness in response to divideness. His blade mends rather than separates.
We find a range of perspectives on ambivalence across cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. Ambivalence about ambivalence, it seems.
Our English word ambivalence is a mashup of Latin words meaning “both” and “value.” It was invented by a psychologist who treated schizophrenia to describe one characteristic of that condition. But psychology has since cataloged pros and cons of what we might call garden variety ambivalence. In our youth, it can help us maintain emotional distance from a caregiver who isn’t trustworthy or discover our agency and develop independence if and as we become ambivalent about (no longer fused with) a trustworthy caregiver. But it also can cause decision paralysis and inhibit action, keeping us stuck.
Christianity’s perspective on ambivalence isn’t so spacious and balanced. It generally takes a dim view of ambivalence. The Gospel of Matthew (6:24) tells us, “No one can serve two masters.” Elsewhere (James 1:8) we read that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” There’s certainly truth in that. Each of us probably knows someone captive to ambivalence who is unstable in all their ways. Maybe you’ve been there yourself.
In philosophy and literature we get a range of perspectives, but mainly a lot of sympathy for this common human experience and recognition that it often produces tragedy or pathos. Think of Hamlet’s question: “To be or not to be.” His character is ambivalent about so much, including existence itself.
The Zen perspective is something different altogether. From a Zen perspective, there’s no fundamental division, ever. People, cats, objects, perspectives, feelings—each of the 10,000 dharmas—is distinct, but there’s no sense in which anything is separate. There is a fundamental oneness to everything, always, including any of us when our heart and mind feels divided. There’s no place to go when we try to hide, metaphorically anyway. We can’t hide from ourselves; from any part of us. The problem is our mental habit of separating, which generates the constructs that divide and paralyze us. We disintegrate, decompose, not realizing the wholeness we are right now, however we are.
Many of our dilemmas and debates won’t be resolved by more thinking and arguing. Zen prizes activity. Doing. Living into and through obscurity toward daylight. We are form. Emptiness manifest. Doing is form. Doing transforms.
If loving someone or something half-heartedly is all you can manage now, love half-heartedly with all your heart. Will you resist the impulse to say or do something kind, and can you truly be one with kindness, in that moment, as you say or do it, not objectifying that kindness as it comes forth, but opening to it, letting it work on you even as you are the vehicle, the embodied expression of kindness? Something good might be returned to you, and your heart might begin to mend if you are willing to receive it. Or, if you know in your heart of hearts that your heart must break, let it break.
When you are stuck, be fully stuck. Don’t force quick fixes to your stuckness. You probably won’t think your way out of it. Each of us is in a call and response relationship with the other 9,999 Things in this vast robe of liberation—the Universe. We’re the Universe calling to itself. Watch and listen for how the Universe is bidding you to respond. As Carl Jung said, using the language of theism, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” Trust your instincts. Respond. Be responsive. Be a part (not be apart). Take part. Participate.
Putting one’s sandal on one’s head was a sign of mourning in ancient China. Chao-chou wasn’t morning the cat. He was mourning his fellow monks’ loss of life. Zen practice came so they could have life, and have it more fully. They didn’t get it.
I gave this talk on October 2, 2025. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 42 in The Gateless Gate:
Once Manjushri went to a place where many Buddhas had assembled with the World-Honored One. When he arrived, all the buddhas had returned to their originaldwelling place.Only a young woman remained, seated in samadhi, near the Buddha’s seat.
Manjushri addressed the Buddha and asked, “How can the young woman get near theBuddha’s seat when I cannot?”
The Buddha replied to Manjushri, “Awaken this young woman from her samadhi and ask her yourself!” Manjushri walked around the young woman three times, snappedhis fingers once, took her to the Brahma Heaven and exerted all his supernaturalpowers but he could not bring her out.
The World-Honored One said, “Even a hundred-thousand Manjushris cannot awaken her. Down below, past twelve hundred million lands, as innumerable as sands of the Ganges, lives the Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom. He will be able to bring her out of her samadhi.”
Instantly the Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom emerged from the earth and madebows before the World-Honored One who gave him his imperial order. DelusiveWisdom stepped before the young woman, snapped his fingers once and at this shecame out of samadhi.
Here’s Yunmen’s verse:
One can bring her out, the other cannot;
both of them are free.
A god mask; a devil mask –
the failure is an elegant performance.
When I decided to talk tonight about the two major virtues Zen foregrounds, wisdom and compassion, and about the relationship between them, I went looking for a koan that would provide a good starting point. I read all the koans featuring Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, and landed on this one. It’s a doozy. I think it works for my purposes. We’ll see what you think when we get to the dialogue after the talk.
You may have noticed that many zendos have at least one image of Manjushri. In the monastery zendo we use on sesshin at Providence Zen Center, you will find him in the lower right of the colorful mural behind the large Buddha statute on the altar. Manjushri is depicted holding a sword, which symbolizes prajna: discriminating wisdom that cuts through delusion, ignorance, and false distinctions. Buddhism regards ignorance and conceptual confusion as the root of suffering.
What are we confused about? The nature of our own existence. We think of ourselves, and we feel, separate, rather than interconnected; woven together as one fabric. Manjushri’s sword severs false views. It cuts the root of our suffering.
We often also find images of Avalokiteshvara, also known as Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of compassion, in meditation halls. She is carved into the front panel of the altar in the monastery zendo at PZC. Their Kwan Um School of Korean Zen is named after her, so you find her everywhere there. The white porcelain statue of a woman with many arms and hands—it’s supposed to be 1,000—is Avalokiteshvara.
In the carving on the front panel of the altar, a massive Avalokiteshvara—aka Kanzeon or Kwan Um—sits on the shore beside rough waters in which a tiny human is thrashing about. Drowning, he reaches out to Avalokiteshvara, who saves him. That human is you or me. The 1,000 hands on that white porcelain statute of Avalokiteshvara nearby are there to sense our needs and to reach out to save all of us.
We tend to dualize thought and feeling, mind and heart, in Western culture. Wisdom is associated with the mind, which we tend to associate with directed thought, so the idea of wisdom takes on a rational, analytical character. It’s solely a product of reasoning. Feeling is associated with the heart, and the heart is associated with emotion, which we tend to regard as irrational.
Asian cultures don’t dichotomize this way. Heart and mind are one. The Japanese word kokoro is translated as heart-mind. That’s heart-hypen-mind. If you ask the Japanese to indicate where in the body this heart-mind resides, they won’t point to the head or the chest. They’ll point to the belly, which is the center of our body, where our breath in meditation and our nervous system settles—where we have butterflies or not. It’s also where we have gut feelings. We associate the gut with intuitive knowledge, of course; knowledge that we feel.
Let’s return to our koan and its verse. When Manjushri arrives to meet Shakyamuni Buddha, all other Buddhas who had been with him disappear. Manjushri’s wisdom sword cuts through false dichotomies. The many dharmas, the many Buddhas, are one. Form is empty. All is Buddha. There is no Buddha to whom Manjushri can get near because all is one.
But there is a woman lost in samadhi—peaceful, even blissful perhaps, but still feeling separate. She is near the Buddha, but apparently has not yet fully realized, fully known and forgotten, her own Buddha nature. Manjushri can’t reach her.
The Buddha says even 1,000 Manjushris, with their penetrating insight into false distinctions and the emptiness of form, could not reach her. In other words, just approaching her with the idea of Emptiness and Oneness won’t reach her.
But, we learn, there is a Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom—a Manjushri that apparently sees form in emptiness, and who can make contact with the Buddha and the 10,000 things. This bodhisattva appears, snaps his fingers, and the woman is released from her spell. Presumably she now realizes that form is emptiness.
This Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom is fascinating and illuminating. Here we see wisdom not as a detached observer or witness, somehow above it all, but in the tangled vines with us. Embodied wisdom. Feeling wisdom. Emotional wisdom.
Of course, it must be so. There is no “above”; no separate place or perspective from which we judge our own or others’ experience. Wisdom is embodied and must be embodied. Wisdom is born of experience. There is solid research showing that feeling our feelings, relating to them well, and integrating them helps us make good decisions, as if we need such geeky confirmation of something that should be so obvious. Feeling and thinking are partners.
The Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom, Manjushri’s other mask, is Avalokiteshvara—compassion. The heart-mind is in the world of form, of humans with our sense of lack and separation, feeling pain that enables us to recognize others’ pain, hearing and feeling others’ cries, knowing we’re not separate, but also not getting lost in emptiness, able to make contact, able to respond with our 1,000 hands.
Wisdom-and-compassion. We find Zen’s lost coin when we realize wisdom and compassion as its two sides.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit today. Here’s the text of the koan I used, with a recording of the talk.
This is Case 19 in The Gateless Gate:
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary Mind is the Tao.”
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
Chao-chou asked, “How can I know the Tao if I don’t direct myself?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “The Tao is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
With these words, Chao-chou had sudden realization.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Zazenkai on September 13, 2025. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 19 in The Gateless Gate:
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary Mind is the Tao.”
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
Chao-chou asked, “How can I know the Tao if I don’t direct myself?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “The Tao is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
With these words, Chao-chou had sudden realization.
The notion of no self is one of the most perplexing teachings of Buddhism to many people. You and I are so obviously here together, so what could it possibly mean?
Most humans seem to consider themselves rather reflexively to be separate beings. Beings that function and, in some sense, exist independently of other beings and things.
If we think about this for a nanosecond, however, it becomes obvious that we’re not independent at all. We’re interdependent. We depend upon clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and nourishing food to eat. We depend upon other people to help meet needs we cannot meet alone, from healthcare to being and feeling safe and loved. If we had been neglected by others for too long as infants, we would not be together now.
So, we’re definitely not physically independent or separable from our environment and social sphere. Yet, even knowing this, we continue to think of ourselves as having or being a separate self. This perspective, or mental formation, is a default setting in the human operating system. It seems so obviously true that most of us don’t even question it. In fact, we organize everything from most religious thought about this life and what may follow it, to human rights law, to our approaches to therapy around the idea that we’re separate selves and some theory of that self. The notion of separate, solid, possibly eternal selves is baked into our language and almost everything else in our culture. These days, in this part of the world and elsewhere, selves are elevated, amplified, and glorified.
But Buddhism, and certainly Zen Buddhism, questions this default perspective or setting. It even pins much of our personal and collective suffering on it. How and why would it question what seems and feels so intuitively, obviously true to so many of us? Is there substance to this mental formation we call the self? If we go looking for it, can we find a self and fix its boundaries in time and space?
Let’s take a moment to try. Please, just close your eyes and settle in for a moment. Please look for yourself in, or apart from, this physical form we know is dependent upon the air you’ll be breathing and the food you ingested this morning. Can you find the self?
Okay. Let’s return. Did you find it? [Discussion]
If we can’t find a substantial, essential, surely eternal self, what’s the alternative? Does our inability to define the parameters of a durable, persistent, separate and separable self lead us to nihilism? No, that’s not the Buddhist view either.
The Buddhist view is that we tend to think of ourselves as nouns, when, in fact, we are more like verbs. We are activity. Interdependently arising, interconnected activity. We are not a thing; we are experience itself.
Buddhism says our existence, our experience, has three key characteristics, or “marks”: impermanence, no self (or insubstantiality), and suffering. Each one seems to follow from the next.
We are born into a realm that is constantly changing. Birth is change! We are change and we are vulnerable to the very change that we are; within which we exist. This sense of self with which we come equipped is useful. Would I eat, socialize, and do other things necessary to sustain myself if I didn’t think I had a self to take care of?
But, as we’ve seen, we tend to objectify, solidify, and cling to this sense of self more strongly than is justified. We expect or want it to exist unchangingly, permanently, apart from the ever-changing stream of activity in which we exist.
And our resistance to accepting the fact that the first mark of existence, impermanence (or perpetual change), also applies to oneself—in other words, our resistance to the second mark of existence, no self—leads to the third mark of existence: we suffer.
We see this suffering all around us, don’t we? Especially in this time and place in which we each of us feels compelled to precisely define, and refine, and project “who I am,” distinctively and essentially. We suffer if we don’t feel sufficiently recognized for our distinctiveness. We suffer even among companions who recognize one another’s distinctiveness. We suffer as groups that regard themselves as distinctive square off against other groups who see their respective forms of distinctiveness as opposed, and perhaps even as negating one another.
Buddhism invites us to examine and see through the illusion of ontological separateness. To hold our “selves” and other “selves” with a light, loving touch.
If we regard ourselves and others as activity, as experience itself, our perspective on life, and how to conduct our lives, shifts. We become much less focused on objects (nouns) we can have or avoid, and much more focused on improving the quality of our shared experience; the interconnected activity that we are manifesting right here and now. And now. And now. And now.
The contemporary Zen teacher Yamada Koun Roshi, said, “The practice of Zen is the perfection of character.” If there is no self to perfect, then what are we perfecting through Zen practice?
Activity. Experience. The quality of our shared, interdependently co-arising experience.
Machs gute. We want to “make it good,” as the Germans say.
This activity is as vast and boundless as outer space. Let’s make it good. Together.
Together, because there is no such thing as apart.
This is the third of three talks I gave at our weeklong sesshin, held from August 24-30, 2025, at Providence Zen Center, a monastery. Our theme was “Chop Wood, Carry Water”: Everyday Form and Formation on the Householder Path.A recording follows the text, which is edited for clarity and conciseness.
This is Case 2 in The Sayings of Layman P’ang:
One day, Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?”
The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
The Layman made up a verse:
“What I do every day is nothing special.
I simply stumble around.
What I do is not thought out.
Where I go is unplanned.
No matter who tries to leave their mark,
The hills and dales are not impressed.
Collecting firewood and carrying water
Are prayers that reach the gods.”
Shih-t’ou approved saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white?”
The Layman said, “I will do whatever is best.”
It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
In this talk, my third and last for this sesshin, I aspire to seize at least one of two opportunities, where I perhaps have room for improvement. My other two talks were longer than usual . . . although, honestly, I am known to give long talks. This one may be just a tad shorter. I hope I don’t break that promise. The other opportunity: the past two talks were packed with a lot of points to follow. Well, I’m going to fall down big time on that front again!
What I’ve been thinking about since the second of the talks I gave is the moment when it came to pass that P’ang didn’t shave his head to join the sangha. He chose a householder’s life. When we meet him here, what words of encouragement might we be able to offer someone who is choosing that life? What words of encouragement might I be able to offer P’ang?
Somehow my response to that question began to come out in a series of tips or encouragements. I think this is probably because, as those are you who join us on Thursday nights know, Nick Patterson, when he it’s his turn to do reading, has for the last several months been reading three or four of Wumen’s 14 Cautions that come at the end of his compilation of the Mumonkan, The Gateless Gate. Wumen is offering cautions presumably for people who live in a monastery. I thought I might offer some encouragements for people who don’t.
I’m not sure I was driving for 14, but I came up with 14. This is something like the alpha version, v0.1 of them. I’ll be continuing to think about them. And because there are 14 of these points, and because I’ve got just a little bit to say about some of them, well, that’s a lot. I encourage you just to listen and let them wash over you. If one thing I say jumps out and sticks with you—is meaningful to you somehow—we’ll be lucky. These eventually will be in writing on my blog, so there’s no need to try to remember it all.
These are not ready for prime time, so thanks for bearing with me as I test drive them with you. Maybe someday these will be in one of those to-be-written books I mentioned during my first talk. One book I want to write is about householder life on the Zen path; maybe I’ll put a more developed version of these points at the end as, I don’t know, Kōgen Roshi’s 14 encouragements or something. We’ll see.
There is no inside or outside
Don’t imagine you leave the world when you enter a monastery or that you enter the world when you leave one.
To be in the world is to be of the world.
As Linji says, “There’s no Dharma outside to run after. There’s no Dharma within to obtain.”
There is no home leaving, ever.
Hide it in plain sight
As Dongshan says, “With practice hidden, function secretly, like a fool, like an idiot,”
As Shih-t’ou, who our beloved P’ang knew well, said “If you wish to speak ten times, keep quiet nine.”
All is sangha
By which I mean: Buddha is Dharma is Sangha.
Be the guest house of which Rumi writes. Welcome all.
There’s truly nothing worth begrudging, as Bodhidharma said.
Relate: Lead with the relational perspective
Those of you who’ve been in our Precepts study group this round, or in the past, or who have read Bernie Glassman’s book on the Precepts, Infinite Circle, know that, in Zen, we look at our Bodhisattva Precepts—our ethical precepts—from three different perspectives: the literal, the relational, and the Absolute.
For our lives in the world, of the world, whether in a monastery or outside of one, the relational is in the lead. It’s where the rubber of the Absolute meets the road of the literal.
Non-killing is the first of the ten grave precepts. Let’s look at it:
The literal is don’t kill. Full stop.
The Absolute: nothing is born or dies. Non-killing.
The relational: If you’re a vegan and the cook doesn’t know it, don’t kill her joy, his joy, whether you choose to eat the beef stew or not.
Not too tight, not too loose
That’s the phrase a hidden Buddhist friend of mine—a certified, crusty, old, cheap Vermonter named Bob Bender, the elder brother of my close friend, Bill—repeats often. “Not too tight, not too loose.”
In other words, seek the middle way.
Make space
This universe is the altar. This planet is the wisdom seat.
Clear a place for yourself; a little place at home to sit. Make a simple altar at which to dedicate your practice and your life.
Make time, and mark time
Make time a time to sit each day; time for group practice; time for sesshin—all as your circumstances permit.
Mark time: holidays like Bohdi Day, the Buddha’s birthday, and Obon. Holidays from your birth tradition if you have one and they’re still meaningful to you.
In Zen monasteries in Japan, they have endless regular and special rites and rituals and religious holidays. In householder life, especially as our cultures mixed and secularized, we can feel adrift in time.
So find ways to mark time, including over the course of a day: waking time, mealtimes, bedtime. We can mark these with little gathas. Like our simple meal gatha, which I say to myself at every meal: We receive this food in gratitude to all beings who helped to bring it to our table, and vow to respond in turn to those in need with wisdom and compassion.
Be time, by which I mean be present and give your presence. Give your genuine attention to other people. There is no greater gift you can give them, and yourself.
Everybody here is keeping time during sesshin: Matt and Libby and Paul and Cheryl—each of us in different ways. You have given me a real gift. Over the last couple of days, I’ve mostly not been wearing my watch, which I realized was making me mildly anxious. I don’t need it. Dropping the watch has helped me be time.
Make a mark
We can’t help but make a mark, whether we intend to or not.
Some of you know I practiced Zen archery years ago with Kanjuro Shibata Sensei XX, one of my first teachers. He was the imperial bowmaker of Japan. He stood in a long line, as the 20th of Japan’s Imperial bow makers.
Most of the shooting one does is inside a kyudojo room where there are hay bales, each covered with a white sheet. You stand a few yards from a hay bale and shoot into it. Far more arrows are shot into hay bales than circular targets far away.
As you can imagine, those sheets get poked full of holes. Everything you do in kyudo is ritualized, like what we do here. There is a ritual way to pull the arrow out of the hay bale. You pull it out slowly, twisting it. And the last thing you do, before you return to where you stand and prepare to take another shot, is to put your finger at the tip of the arrow and touch the arrow tip to the hole you have made. This gesture acknowledges you’ve made a mark. We can’t help but make a mark.
How do we make a mark through our householder existence? By not sparing the dharma assets. Develop and share your talents. Master some craft to life craft, to self-craft: teaching, cooking, poetry, medicine, hospitality, physical therapy. In other words, like Pierre, Maurice Sendak’s character, who I loved—and if you don’t know this reference, check it out: Care.
But as you make your mark, be gentle, and leave no trace. Don’t forget: The hills and dales are not impressed.
All is precious, but don’t be too precious
All these forms to which we attend in minute detail are only to help us have a good shared experience. They’re not for the sake of the forms themselves. We embrace them to give life a pleasing shape and texture and feeling when we’re practicing them, and to learn to give life a pleasing shape and texture and felling when we’re not.
So hold them with the light touch. Don’t force them if we are forcing others by forcing them. If we’re pooping the party.
It’s nothing personal
By which I mean two things:
First, enlightenment isn’t something we can get. Something we can have.
Second, don’t take that, or anything else, too personally.
Optimize for wholeness and integration
This also has two dimensions:
First, about our life choices. You probably will make less money if you walk the Zen path. We could all be working right now. It probably will influence choices you make about your livelihood and how you live; opportunities we don’t take up.
Still on this first dimension, don’t privilege the formal forms of our practice over the rest of your life. Find the right balance, like the surfer. For example, if you’re married, your marriage probably will suffer if you don’t leave sesshin to celebrate your spouse’s birthday, if it falls during the week of sesshin. I know this from personal experience with teachers who expected me to be at sesshin over my wife’s birthday year after year. Don’t ever practice with a teacher who wouldn’t let you leave sesshin for an evening to celebrate your partner’s or child’s birthday.
Second, optimize for wholeness and integration by exploring your shadows and welcoming what you meet there.
Okay, on to the last three encouragements. I have less to say about them.
Life is the teacher
Trust your experience.
A footnote on that is, if you invite somebody into a Zen teacher role in your life, make sure that is what they are teaching. Make sure that’s what they want for you. That they know life is your ultimate teacher.
Time passes swiftly, and opportunity is lost. Do not squander your life.
This is from our Evening Gatha, of course. Some of these aren’t very original.
Choose the long road, take it easy, and enjoy the ride
Sometimes swiftly, always slowly.
There is no short road. There are no shortcuts, either.
This is the second of three talks I gave at our weeklong sesshin, held from August 24-30, 2025, at Providence Zen Center, a monastery. Our theme was “Chop Wood, Carry Water”: Everyday Form and Formation on the Householder Path.A recording follows the text, which is edited for clarity and conciseness.
This is Case 2 in The Sayings of Layman P’ang:
One day, Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?”
The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
The Layman made up a verse:
“What I do every day is nothing special.
I simply stumble around.
What I do is not thought out.
Where I go is unplanned.
No matter who tries to leave their mark,
The hills and dales are not impressed.
Collecting firewood and carrying water
Are prayers that reach the gods.”
Shih-t’ou approved saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white?”
The Layman said, “I will do whatever is best.”
It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
Today I want to zero in on the final three lines of this case:
Shih-t’ou approved saying, “So are you going to wear black or white?
The Layman said, “I will do whatever is best.”
It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
So what might Layman P’ang have been deliberating about at this moment he was considering leaving home; joining a monastery or living a hermit’s life? I’m not sure that, when we meet Shih-t’ouin this case, he even would have had a monastery yet. Ancient Zen masters were often named after the place they sat, like a certain mountain. If I’m not mistaken, Shih-t’ou means flat rock. He apparently just sat on top of a flat rock and eventually built his monastery at or near that spot. The flat rock was where people found him.
P’ang is thinking about taking up this life himself. Why might he want to do that, we can ask? I can sort of relate to him at this moment in his journey. Probably like many of you, I have long had what we might call a contemplative orientation. When I was very young—probably before, certainly in, first grade—I did some things that were kind of weird for a little kid, I suppose. I created a little monk’s cell on the floor of my closet. I would go in there and shut the door, turn on a little light and read the Bible, and The Hardy Boys, and Maurice Sendak. It was a comfortable little place.
We lived in a suburb of Denver at the time. It was still developing. We lived in a track home community; we were the first occupants of our home there. And there was a lot of construction around us. I created a little shrine in a nearby construction site; a little cavity in the side of a large pile of dirt where I put some religious objects. I can’t remember what. I was raised Catholic, so probably a little Jesus statue or something. I’d go there periodically to pray.
Fast forward to my 20s and early 30s—so about the age when we meet P’ang in our story—and I was doing what P’ang did. I was traveling around meeting teachers. I learned to meditate in my mid-20s, though I think even that little kid was doing something we might call meditation. But formal meditation: Maybe I’d read about it and experimented with it earlier out of books. I certainly read a lot of contemplative literature and Dharma books when I was in college and graduate school. I took classes that were relevant to what we do here. But my first formal instruction in meditation was with Tibetan Buddhist teachers in Berkeley, California, when I was a young lawyer in working in San Francisco.
I lived in Berlin for a while after that, and I made the rounds in Germany and Europe meeting teachers and sitting with different groups. I read a lot of Dharma books there and I sort of began to settle down and mature into two primary forms of practice. Back then I was still centered in Catholicism, I suppose. I discovered the contemplative strain in Catholicism, and the Trappists specifically. I used to go on retreat to a Trappist monastery and to a Carmelite hermitage. I also began sitting with his Zen community led by Kanjuro Shibata Sensei XX, the imperial bowmaker of Japan—practicing Zen archery with him and sitting Zazen.
I rarely went on a normal vacation for many years. All my vacation time—all the vacation time I could get, and many weekends, too—I would spend on retreat, often at monasteries. I was in the same kind of period of discernment as P’ang was when we meet him. I was considering entering a monastery.
Why didn’t I do it? Why did I even consider it? Why I considered it is clear, and I’ll get to that in a moment. Why I didn’t do it is less clear to me. Or is still becoming clear to me, even today. So why may P’ang or you or any of us consider taking up monastic life? Well, let me suggest some reasons. This is not an exhaustive list.
As we experience when we’re here, on sesshin at a monastery, it’s a very structured life. Time is structured. Space is structured. Many of the decisions we must make on a day-to-day basis outside of a monastery are made for us. The forms, the norms, are very clear and regularized. We just follow them. We’re midway through sesshin, and we’re kind of in that groove now. What do we gain from that? What does it afford us?
All these forms are designed to support us in a particular way; to support our spiritual development, or what we might imagine to be spiritual development. They take away certain types of burdens from us. The burden of making a decision. The burden of endlessly negotiating things with others. They resolve conflicts in advance, if you will. There’s a Chinese proverb that I think is interesting: Like minds make peace. When we align our minds around a set of norms or behaviors, it tends to unify us and makes peace in a sense.
What does this word “spiritual” mean anyway? Well, etymologically, it’s associated with breath. We can get metaphorical about that; the breath of God, breath of life. But it’s also about basic, physiological breath. Lots of words related to “spiritual” are really interesting too, like aspire. It’s no coincidence that in Zen practice, and lots of other spiritual practices, we focus on or regulate our breath in certain ways. In Zen practice, we just learn to breathe naturally.
These norms and routines in an environment like this make it easier just to live naturally in every way, including physiologically. To catch our breath. To breathe in a steady way. Steady breathing slows our heart rate; settles or calms our nervous system. That helps us find a kind of still point, and this tends to make it easier to to show up with ease and harmony—as we’ve been chanting about. If we can meet life that way, things tend to go better, and we tend to tune in to the frequency of life; to what life is always trying to offer us.
These are some of the opportunities that the structures and rhythms of monastic life offer. I think many of us come to a place like this, observe monastic life, and think of it as very rigorous and otherwise hard. But I want to turn that notion on its head. Many of us initially experience these sort of routines—the rigor and the forms— as hard and probably novice monks experience things that way. But from the perspective of a seasoned practitioner—and I know this from talking to people who have spent their whole life in a monastery, like my teacher, Kevin Hunt, who has been a monastic since his late teens and now is 93–one ultimately comes to experience that life as easier. It’s designed to remove challenges and burdens of life outside the monastery. I think it’s fair to say that Kevin sees life outside the monastery as harder.
Kevin’s Dharma heirs and those of his teacher, the Jesuit Bob Kennedy, are mostly householders. They have told me they see the kind of life we live as where the real action is at in this era. The future of practice. And in fact, Bob’s teacher, Bernie Glassman, who trained with Maezumi Roshi in more of a monastic model, eventually gave up the pretense of monasticism entirely to begin to tinker with and pioneer a new way of approaching and thinking about Zen practice that was more focused on householder life. I know from talking to people familiar with his thinking that Maezumi Roshi thought and dreamed about that, too, but felt constrained by the old norms and the expectations of the Soto authorities back in Japan. He felt constrained from taking any bold steps in that direction. Bernie waited until after Maezumi Roshi’s death to begin to take those steps.
So Why enter a monastery? Why consider entering a monastery? Well, maybe there are better and worse reasons for doing it. And maybe some of the worst reasons are, in a sense, inevitable for many who do enter a monastery. I think a lot of people probably enter to escape. And some likely enter because they imagine that, to be spiritual, to be holy, they need to do this. That it somehow will make them more spiritual or make them more holy.
Kevin’s example is interesting. I think he represents the best reason to enter a monastery. He knew from an early age that he wanted to be as close to God as he could be, and, for him, that meant living a monastic life. His orientation is theistic; an interesting brand of theism that is married with Zen. It was about intimacy from his perspective. His karma was such that monastic life was how he could feel closest to God.
I want to suggest—and I hope—that Layman P’ang chose not to shave his head to join the sangha out of a similar impulse. I sense he made the same kind of decision Kevin made, having explored these different options for living a whole bunch. I don’t know whether the Ten Ox Herding Pictures existed yet. Regardless, I think he understood that ultimate image of returning to the marketplace with empty hands. Somebody, you know, “in the world,” as we say, living life intimately.
So what’s lost when we enter a monastery? Well, certain types of freedom and choices. These days, Kevin really loves to leave the monastery. He usually wants to go to a restaurant and have a piece of red meat, which is served less in the monastery. He might even have a beer or a martini, not a common occurrence in his life generally. Most of us in this part of the world, who are insanely fortunate compared to most humans, almost have the opposite problem. We must make the choice not to over-indulge. Kevin is part of the Trappist order, which is the most hardcore of the monastic orders. People have very few possessions; they take a vow poverty. There are certain pleasurable experiences we take for granted that they don’t have.
Of course, something is gained by that. They strip away what is not essential, so they discover simple pleasure—like we have right here, now, if we notice the gentle breeze blowing through the Zendo. They experience how incredibly sweet a mandarin orange is if we’re not comparing it to sugar cookies and sodas. With our constant access to amplified pleasure, novelty is lost. We get to have new experiences all the time. Surprising new experiences; experiences that come out of the blue. Of course that happens in monasteries, too. It’s always happening everywhere, but we might not notice it if we’re compulsively seeking novelty and peak experiences all the time.
Our settling practices can help us encounter every moment as new. You’ve heard me say Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who said, “You can’t step in the same river twice,” got it completely wrong. I say you can’t step in the same river once. Everything’s always in flux and changing. Our settling practices can help us notice that experience and appreciate the novelty and the newness of every moment.
But there are some types of newness, like the concert I’ll see in October with one of my new favorite bands, that monastics probably aren’t going to have. Key relationships: they don’t have free access to family and friends. They don’t speak to them as regularly. They certainly don’t text with them 14 times a day, as we’re used to doing.
What else is lost? Certain types of impact potential. This is what I think Kevin and Bob are getting at; why they think the kind of life we live is really where the action is today. It must be sort of hard at times to sit in a monastery with so much suffering in the world and only be able to pray; only be able to interact with the people who come visit. We have much more opportunity, and perhaps obligation, to intervene, as we’re called, and as we skillfully can, in situations where we can be helpful.
The last thing I’ll mention—and, again, this is not an exhaustive list—that you’re giving up by becoming a monatstic is many important training opportunities. As householders, we train amid intimate relationships with partners and family members. We train in a torrent of choice and change that they don’t experience. Their physical needs are met. They brew beer or make chocolates to help subsidize their material needs, but, in general, they can’t be fired from a job, and they mostly don’t have to deal with demands of unreasonable clients and bosses. They don’t have to meet those circumstances as practice opportunities as we do. All this is why many of them would say the life we live is a harder life. They mean it’s harder to practice amid all that. They know we have the same aspiration; the same breath, the same spirit—at least those of us who occasionally visit places like this and strike up relationships with people like them.
They know they have something to offer us, but we also, they see, have something to offer them. They know we’re seeking what they’re seeking; what brought them to the monastery. And they recognize that it is harder, in a way, to walk this path, in our form of life than it is in their life form, whatever they might have thought about that when they entered the monastery.
Let me offer a little metaphor here that may be useful. What we’re doing in spiritual practice is a lot like surfing, as I understand it. Things are impermanent, always changing. Life, our experience, has a visible form, like the form of a wave, but don’t think that wave is stable or substantial. It’s ephemeral and it’s moving. What the expert surfer does is amazing, when you think about it. They learn to ride, to find their balance on top of, the crest of that wave. What they’re doing on the crest of that wave is falling a thousand times the second. Always adjusting, recovering to maintain their balance on the crest of impermanence. Getting to the point where you can do that is going to look really choppy. The first time the expert tried to do it, it didn’t look anything like they make it look now.
I think many monastics look at our lives, and they think, “Man, you’re out there in the big waves. Yeah, we’re maintaining our balance here in the monastery, but this is like skimboarding; what we’re doing. We’re in the shallow water. You’re in the deep end, where the big waves are.”
Their practice opportunities, are, in many ways, more manageable than many of ours, at least much of the time. In our householder lives, we are dealing with all sorts of challenges that are, well, genuinely challenging. Relationships are top of mind for me. Relationships with aging parents or aging partners or peers. Relationships with intimate partners whatever our ages. Monastics are intimate with one another, but not quite the same way many of us are intimate with somebody. Another person with whom we literally lie naked, and with whom we are naked spiritually and psychologically. That’s an extreme level of vulnerability. It’s as hard to manage as some of us might think maintaining silence all day long, every day of the year, is hard to manage.
I mentioned work and having to deal with material reality and money and scarcity and abundance. Things are kept very level for them in a material sense. My family went through a period of economic vulnerability when I was in high school and early college. I didn’t know it at the time, because my parents insulated us from the details pretty well, but we had just $300 to our name as a family at one point. I am certain my parents, with three children, were worried in ways that monks seldom worry.
We also contend with difference more than monastics do. Different norms, expectations, perspectives, worldviews, moral codes. We just confront more difference than they do. People bring these things to monastic life, but, to some extent, they are normalized or suppressed. You hue to a common moral vision and code that is essentially imposed on you in a monastery. Christian monasteries have the Rule of St. Benedict. Many Buddhist monasteries have some version of the Vinaya. And you reconcile yourself to that somehow.
Also Distractions: I don’t think I need to say more about that.
And the last thing I’ll mention from our long list of greater challenges is risk. We all deal with risks that are more frequent and present and, well, risky. Many people who walk this path, and who might consider entering a monastery, are tuned towards introversion. But outside a monastery, we must meet new people all the time and compel ourselves to venture forth in ways that you just do not in a monastic environment. There are many other forms of risk in our lives: for one of us, who is commuting to this sesshin, driving here early in the morning with lots of people driving too fast on the road; driving away from here at night with poor eyesight. Monks drive, but less frequently.
This isn’t a comparison for purposes of declaring one life form good and another bad. It is a comparison for purposes of noting and being honest about what is different about the life we live and the life that, perhaps, the Buddha and some people in his era and since then have thought people need to live to express the best versions of themselves, leaving home supposedly to grow or meet life fully or seek truth.
I submit that, in this day and age, as we read in that lovely Judith Collin poem, or as Kevin Hunt and Bob Kennedy would say, the major turn of the Dharma wheel is about broadening our sense of sangha to include the kind of life we live. I submit that it is as hard as life here in a monastery; that looking at our lives from this monastic perspective, which we tend to think of as harder, there’s reason to think it is the other way around: that it’s harder to walk the Zen path “in the world,” so to speak.
It may be easier to cultivate attention in an environment like this, but this is not ultimately a practice about attention. It’s a practice about intention and action; about how we show up, how we meet the world. The quality of our attention and the capacity to maintain it is an important condition for consistently meeting the world as our best selves. But a lot of the world lies beyond the four walls of a place like this. And the rest of the world needs what has historically and traditionally been cultivated primarily in places like this to be brought beyond these four walls and out into the world.
That’s why we’re here for a time, ironically. To realize this more fully. That’s who we are. That’s why we’ll leave here on Saturday.
This is the first of three talks I gave at our weeklong sesshin, held from August 24-30, 2025, at Providence Zen Center, a monastery. Our theme was “Chop Wood, Carry Water”: Everyday Form and Formation on the Householder Path.A recording follows the text, which is edited for clarity and conciseness.
During this sesshin, we are going to be exploring the theme of form and formation along the householder path of Zen. This is the reading we’ve chosen as our launchpad for exploring this theme. It’s the second story—one could call it a case, and I’ll say more about that in a minute—in The Sayings of Layman P’ang. It’s titled “Subtleties of Daily Life”:
One day, Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?”
The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
The Layman made up a verse:
“What I do every day is nothing special.
I simply stumble around.
What I do is not thought out.
Where I go is unplanned.
No matter who tries to leave their mark,
The hills and dales are not impressed.
Collecting firewood and carrying water
Are prayers that reach the gods.”
Shih-t’ou approved saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white?”
The Layman said, “I will do whatever is best.”
It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
This little book I’m reading from, The Sayings of Layman P’ang, which I expect many of you are familiar with, is a classic in China, even to this day. It’s one of the most revered texts in Chinese culture. It is a collection of sayings of Layman P’ang—about whom I’ll say more in a moment—but probably not all of them. We think there were more. These were collected within, let’s say, 10 years after his death.
P’ang lived in the late 8th century and the early 9th century. He died, I think, in 808. And he made quite an impression on people. This little book is really our first collection of koans—of stories about teachers. P’ang became a teacher. I’ll say more about that in a minute, too.
This collection of anecdotes, of koans, about P’ang and his encounters with monastics, was compiled before the first compilations of koans that we’re familiar with. Even today in China, most people aren’t going to be very familiar with the koan collections centered on monastic Zen teachers. But they are still familiar with The Sayings of Layman P’ang.
So who was P’ang? He grew up the son of the governor, of a provincial governor, or—we’re not sure—maybe the son of an official who worked for a governor. That’s a little murky. But it’s safe to say he grew up in privilege. Likely with some affluence and access and education.
When we meet him in this story I’ve just read, which is the second story in the book—I’ll say a little bit about the first story in just a second—he’s probably in his 30s. He’s married. I guess we can’t know whether he’s had both of his kids, but he does eventually have two kids, a daughter and a son.
And, apparently, he had been something of a scholar of Confucius thought. By the time we meet him, he’s probably wandered around quite a bit. We know he had encounters with Taoist teachers. So he’s steeped in Confucian thought and Taoist thought, which were the two big schools of thought in China that predated the emergence of Zen.
And when we meet P’ang, he’s meeting some of the earliest Zen teachers. Towering figures in the history of Zen. It is the heyday of Zen in China during P’ang’s life. He lives during the Tang dynasty, which was a time of real prosperity and cultural flourishing and relative peace and stability in the rocky history of ancient China.
Shih-t’ou, the teacher he encounters in this story, is one of two towering figures who live in the area where P’ang is living. (Shih-t’ou authored the Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, which we just read.) He is the Dharma Heir of Huineng, the sixth ancestor of Zen, who was himself a layman when he entered the monastery, and for some time after he became a teacher. The sixth ancestor made a sort of scandalous progression from kitchen boy who cleaned rice to head of a major monastery. Shih-t’ou is the person to whom we trace the Soto Zen school in which we practice.
P’ang will go on throughout this book to meet many other local Zen figures, including the teacher to whom we trace the Rinzai school of Zen. So he’s really making the rounds at the foundation and formation of the Zen tradition. He’s exploring the emergence of Zen as Zen is exploring itself, so to speak. He develops a close relationship with not only these two major teachers I’ve mentioned, Shih-t’ou and Ma-tsu, but another 15 or 20 more monastics who live in the area.
When we meet P’ang early in this collection of sayings, in the story I read, the second case, it’s not his first encounter with Shih-t’ou. They have had at least one other meeting we know about. It is the subject of the first story in this collection. It’s a famous story. In that story, P’ang is visiting Shih-t’ou, who, at that time, probably lives as a hermit in the area in which P’ang lives. P’ang brings Shih-t’ou his genjokoan, his life koan. This is what genjokoan, which Dogen later writes about, means, by the way. Many of us walk around with a burning question, like “What’s the meaning of life?” Mine was “When can I stop sitting?” When can I stop practicing? That question ate at me for years, years ago.
The genjokoan P’ang brings Shih-t’ou, the burning question P’ang asks him, is, “What about someone who has no connection with the 10,000 dharmas?” This is P’ang coming to a teacher and actually declaring something. I am a person who no longer has any connection to the 10,000 dharmas, to the 10,000 things, to the world of form.
What does Shih-t’ou do? He covers P’ang’s mouth; silences him. And P’ang has a great realization.
So, in our case, the second case, Shih-t’ou is coming to check in on P’ang. He says, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?”
Well, you know, this is a Zen teacher. So, as always, this could either be an innocent question or a not so innocent question. Maybe he’s asking. “Hey, P’ang, I’m wondering: Are you still stuck in emptiness?” Or, has that realization you had in our last encounter really begun to sink in. Do you know, as we chant in the Heart Sutra, that form is exactly emptiness, and emptiness is exactly form? Do you know that as more than an idea? Do you know it in your bones? Do you know it so completely that you’ve forgotten it?
The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.” That’s a promising response. It seems P’ang may be returning Shih-t’ou’s double meaning with a double meaning of his own. It seems perhaps P’ang realizes his ordinary life is validating and expressing the inexpressible. That he’s realized the 10,000 dharmas speak for themselves.
Shih-t’ou says. “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?” A joust to P’ang’s parry! This is a checking question. Shih-t’ou is saying, “That’s a nice response, P’ang, but I’m still wondering: Is it just for show? Is it just for me, or do you truly get it for yourself?”
The Layman made up a verse, “Truly, what I do every day is nothing special.” The ordinary is extraordinary. I’m not trying to put a second head on top of my head anymore.
“I simply stumble around. What I do is not thought out. Where I go is unplanned.” What is this “I” that P’ang repeats three times? That I is now in its place. P’ang now experiences small mind as situated, at ease, and at rest in Big Mind. Small mind has given up its pretense of control, its control project. Even while I’m goal directed, I stumble around. Even as I chatter to myself, direct myself, what I do is not thought out. Even when I’m executing on my best laid plans, where I go is unplanned, P’ang is saying.
“No matter who tries to leave their mark, the hills and dales are not impressed.” I (Jeff) have for a long time planned to write, and have been working on writing, a couple of books. It’s gone much slower than I would like. And that bothered me a lot for a long time. It still bothers me, but not quite the same way as it once did. It used to bother me because I was so sure the world needs these books.
Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve got something to say. If I do complete them, I hope they’ll be good books that people find useful. And yet, I realize and have come to accept, that if I do complete these books, and even if they’re best sellers, they don’t have the ultimacy, the extra ultimate importance, that I once invested in or imagined of and for them.
Last weekend, I was on sesshin with another community that I’m sort of loosely connected to. At one point on a break, I was sitting in the library of the retreat center, where this sesshin was happening. I looked over to my left, and I saw a book by someone I knew; one of my early teachers, the Trappist monk, Thomas Keating. I got up and I wandered along the bookshelf, which was quite long. At the other end of it I saw a book by another one of my teachers, the adult developmental psychologist, Robert Kegan. Keating is now dead. Kegan is alive but retired.
I saw lots of books between these two, by people I don’t know. I had never heard of many of them, many of whom presumably are dead. Keating and Kegan and their books matter a lot to me. Yet, no matter who tries to leave their mark, the hills and dales are not ultimately impressed.
“Collecting firewood and carrying water are prayers that reach the gods.” Maybe you didn’t know that one of the most famous phrases in all of Zen originates from this householder, P’ang. It’s usually expressed as “chop wood, carry water,” and it’s been popularized in many ways, by many people. It’s been in the title of books. It’s in the lyrics of a Van Morrison tune.
Every day: sacred. Life as prayer. Our actions as prayer. What we do is continuous practice. And this is what our Zen practice is about. It’s about discovering ourselves, washing the dishes, as the universe’s meditation.
Shih-t’ou approved, saying, “So are you going to wear black or white?” No more checking questions.
“Are you going to wear black or white?” In those days in China monks wore black and householders wore white. Notice I’m not saying priest and layperson. I won’t go off on that riff here. You’ve heard it from me many times before. But, you know, in those days, there was a kind of normativity around monasticism. The Buddha had given the example of leaving home as what it meant to step on the path of spiritual development. That’s a simplification and too hard a binary, of course, because there were householders who were respected members of the Buddha’s broader network, like Vamilikirti. But becoming a monk was thought to be extra special.
Apparently, P’ang has confided in Shih-t’ou that he thought about leaving home; becoming a monastic. Maybe Shih-t’ou, having seen the depth of P’ang’s insight and commitment, had raised that possibility. From our present-day perspective, that seems almost unthinkable. P’ang is married. He has kids or kids on the way. What? Really? Would he leave? Apparently, it was a live question for P’ang at this point in which we meet him on his journey.
The Layman said, “I will do whatever is best.” In other words, I’m still thinking about it. I’m still in a process of discernment. I’m not sure. What is my karma? What is my life to live? I don’t know. I don’t know yet.
What do people imagine? What do people imagine today about leaving home and going to live in a monastery, or to live as a hermit? Did you think that’s what we need to do to be “spiritual”? To be holy, live a holy life. What was P’ang imagining?
“It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha” Well, as you know, in the Buddha’s day, and really throughout history, even to the present in most Buddhist streams in Asia, “sangha” means the community of monastics. But we use that word more broadly and think of ourselves, we householders, as part of the sangha. But that is not how people have primarily thought about it within mainstream Buddhism in cultures beyond the West.
In fact, Zen teachers in Japan—because in modern times they tend to spend very little time in training monasteries, and they live in local temples with their families, where and they eat meat and drink alcohol—are not regarded by monastics in other parts of Asia as real members of the sangha. Even the founder of the White Plum lineage in which we practice, Taizan Maezumi Roshi: he was, much revered by Tibetan teachers and Burmese teachers and Sri Lankan teachers, but, at events at which they all gathered and spoke to Buddhist practitioners, I understand Maezumi Roshi was not always, maybe not even most of the time, invited to sit up on the Diaz with these other teachers. Because the way Japanese teachers practice is not considered pure, or right, from their perspective. So they’re not really part of the sangha.
Okay, spoiler alert: I’ll tell you a little bit more about what comes after today’s story. P’ang continues to wander to meet Zen teachers and other monastics. He soon meets Ma-tsu, who I mentioned earlier, to whom we trace the Rinzai Zen stream. P’ang goes away at one point and lives with Ma-tsu for a year or two. But he eventually leaves. His karma became clear, his path became clear. It came to pass that he never shaved his head and joined the sangha.
To this day, even in the West, when you meet somebody who uses the word “priest” to identify themselves, what that really means traditionally is that they went through the ritual of Shuke Tokudo, which is the ceremony for entering a monastery. It’s about becoming a monk, not becoming a “priest”—historically, traditionally, anyway. They shave their head, and they take some vows, as they move into a monastery. The vows are pretty much the same vows we take at Jukai.
P’ang decided not to shave his head and enter a monastery. It’s lucky for us that he didn’t, because his decision, his example, reverberates and resounds throughout history. He was eventually acknowledged as a teacher. He received transmission from Ma-tsu. So early on in Zen history, we see all the supposed rules being broken.
P’ang didn’t leave any successors as far as we know. But along the way, his wife and kids, it seems, became inspired to practice. The family took all their luxury goods at one point out into the middle of a lake, on a boat, and sunk the boat. They supported themselves from that point forward by weaving and selling baskets.
I really commend this book to you. Basically, it’s a bunch of stories in which P’ang goes around one-upping all the local monastics. Or, as the British would say, taking the piss out of them. It’s all very amusing, in addition to being very wise.
P’ang is quite something, and he needs to be centered more on the path that we walk, because his life is our life. He clearly appreciated his life in the world. And he provides encouragement to us. Singing in an a cappella group. Caring for a loved one with dementia. Taking kids off to college. These are prayers that reach the gods.
Let me close with a reading from our Sutra Book. The lovely poem by Judith Collin, titled The Layman’s Lament:
I gave this talk on August 6, 2025, at Full Moon Zen’s Sunrise Sit. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 49, Where the Path Leads, in The Sayings of Layman P’ang:
One day the Layman saw a young boy herding oxen and asked him, “Where does this path we’re following lead to?”
The boy said, “I don’t know where it goes.”
The Layman said, “Aren’t you herding the oxen?”
The boy said, “They live in these fields.”
The Layman said, “What time of day is it anyway?”
The boy said, “It’s time to take the oxen to pasture.”
The Layman laughed heartily.
Let’s take this wonderful story line-by-line.
One day the Layman saw a young boy herding oxen and asked him, “Where does this path we’re following lead to?”
P’ang is an acknowledged Zen master and his question is the sort of coy one you’d expect from a teacher. One of those questions that seems ordinary and innocent enough but is probing the depth of your insight (and your sense of humor). But is that really what’s happening here? P’ang is the trickster who knows all the holier-than-though monks in the region and takes great pleasure in one-upping them. I’m inclined to think he’s in unfamiliar territory, is innocently asking this young stranger for directions, and is about to get beaten at his own game.
The boy said, “I don’t know where it goes.”
The boy’s opening line reminds me of something my eldest, who’s now 20, said when he was four or five. Esther and I were in our bedroom and one of was griping about something a parent or sibling had done. As I walked out of the room, I said, “Well, you know what they say: You can’t choose your family.”
We didn’t realize our son had been just outside listening the whole time. Without missing a beat, he lit up and exclaimed, “Yeah, and you can’t even choose yourself!”
Wisdom from the mouth of babes. Does anyone really know what this is, who we are, and where we’re going?
The Layman said, “Aren’t you herding the oxen?”
Now we begin to sense P’ang knows he’s bumbled into a trap and may have met his match. “Okay, little sage, so seemingly self-possessed, surely you imagine you’re in charge and leading the way here?”
P’ang’s second question is anything but innocent. It’s a joust to the boy’s parry. The boy is herding ox, but will he recognize and has he tamed the ox I’m talking about?
Has he discovered his wandering small mind situated in and as Big Mind , as we see in Zen’s famous Ox Herding pictures? Has his small mind been weened of the illusion that it’s the center of the universe and locus of ultimate control?
The boy’s response?
The boy said, “They live in these fields.”
Touché!
There’s a footnote in the text which says, “The sense of this statement is that the oxen know where they are going.”
Indeed. Let me read you a short passage about dealing with distractions in meditation that makes the boy’s point more explicitly. This is from a wonderful new book, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism, by Bret Davis, an American Rinzai teacher and philosophy professor who has extensive practice experience in Japan. Drawing inspiration from Shunryu Suzuki, founder of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the San Francisco Zen Center, Davis writes:
Another teaching Suzuki Roshi gives in this regard goes even deeper and wider. He says: If you want to control your mischievous mind, don’t try to control it. Don’t try to pin it down or confine it to a mental jail cell. Do the opposite and give it a wide-open space in which to roam. Using another vivid metaphor, he says: “To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.” That wide-open pasture is an image for what he and other Zen masters call “Big Mind.” All the thoughts and distractions of our small minds take place within a wide-open and non-judgmental field of awareness.
The Layman said, “What time of day is it anyway?”
P’ang, still fancying himself the teacher, hasn’t yet admitted defeat. We get another checking question, but who’s checking whom?
The boy said, “It’s time to take the oxen to pasture.”
Enough of this stuff about emptiness, Old Man. Bye, now. The cows and I are hungry. It’s time to eat.
The Layman laughed heartily.
May we all learn not to take ourselves too seriously and come to laugh this cosmic laugh with Layman P’ang.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Thursday evening sit on July 3, 2025. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 171 in John Daido Loori’s translation of Dogen’s compilation of 300 koans, The True Dharma Eye:
Dizang said, “Where are you going, Reverend?”
Fayan said, “I am wandering on a pilgrimage.”
Dizang said, “What is the purpose of your pilgrimage.”
Fayan said, “I don’t know.”
Dizang said, “Ah! Not knowing is most intimate.”
Straightaway, Fayan had great realization.
We return to this cherished koan repeatedly. We tend to focus on Fayan’s not knowing and Dizang’s declaration that not knowing is the most intimate.
But what is it that Fayan doesn’t know? He doesn’t know where he’s going.
Fayan was a senior monk at another monastery. He had some sort of transformative experience that prompted him to take a group of monks on pilgrimage, presumably in search of something—learning, a site for a new monastery, or whatever. Along the way, they took shelter in Dizang’s monastery during a rainstorm, and so we get this case.
In his encounter with Dizang, Fayan realizes he doesn’t know where he’s going. In this encounter he comes to realize more profoundly there is nowhere to go.
Knowing we’re ultimately nowhere—nowhere knowable in the small and constraining way we’ve been seeking to know—paradoxically is the most vital, alive, liberating way to be present to our own life, to others, and to experience. Knowing there’s no ultimate goal or magical end state we can reach—giving up the game and the ghost—frees us to be here, now as the goal. Knowing this deep in our bones—so deep we forget it—allows us to live with ease. To avoid layering the kinds of suffering we can avoid over the kinds of suffering we can’t avoid, like sickness, old age, and death.
I have long understood all this conceptually, and I’ve long professed it as a Zen student and teacher. But, honestly, it’s still sinking into my bones; not yet set in them and forgotten. My present experience is somewhere between Fayan’s and Dizang’s respective experiences as recounted in this koan, if we allow ourselves to idealize a bit about Dizang’s experience.
I know this by observing and being honest with myself about the ways I show up as if there’s someplace ultimately important to go, and as if I know where it is and I’m headed there.
How many times am I rushing to get to our Thursday night sights, driving a bit faster and more aggressively, and with more tension, anxiety, and anger, than I would have if I had left myself more time to get here? That would require doing less, being less busy, and that would require me to see some of the things I’m doing and goals I’m pursuing as less ultimately important than I seem to think they are. You know what? Many of the things I’m doing, perhaps most or even all of them, are less important than I think they are, ultimately speaking, and even viewing many of them solely from Zen’s relative perspective.
The other day I left my home for my office soon after Sunrise Sit. I had just meditated, and yet now I was mired in the start of an overly programmed day, rushing to make my first meeting. I came to a rolling “stop” at an intersection and made a right turn into traffic, apparently leaving the driver in the oncoming car to little space. He became angry with me, zoomed around and past me, pulled in front of me almost causing a multi-car accident, and then slowed down to taunt me. We started exchanging unpleasant words and gestures. Our days and the days of those around us got off to an unpleasant start.
What good is this? Where do I think I’m going that’s so important or desirable to get to that I’ll let it ruin my own present experience and the experience of others?
Since that experience I’ve taken up a new mantra: “Nowhere to go.”
When I’m walking from the elevator to my office and I pass the person who always wants to stop me to chat, even when I’m rushing to log onto Zoom for a meeting, and I bristle because I feel I just don’t have time for it?
Nowhere to go.
Conversely, when I’m asked to do something worthy, by someone I respect, and I feel guilty about saying no but realize saying yes will detract from other commitments and add avoidable stress to my life?
Nowhere to go.
When I’m inclined to close my office door reflexively, to create a supposed sanctuary for myself, a barrier between me and a world that sometimes seems to expect too much?
Nowhere to go.
When someone walks through that open door with a need or concern, or just a desire to connect, diverting my attention from a project or a pleasant distraction in which I’m immersed?
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen zazenkai on June 14, 2024. A recording follows the text.
Impermanence was the theme of my last talk, which I gave at Sunrise Sit on June 4th. I opened it with this case from the Blue Cliff Record:
A monk said to Dasui, “When the thousands of universes are altogether and utterlydestroyed in the kalpa fire — I wonder whether this perishes or not.
“This perishes,” said Dasui.
“If so,” persisted the monk, “does it follow the other.”
“It follows the other,” said Dasui.
As you can see, we’re serious about the idea of impermanence in Zen. Even emptiness is empty. It dies with form. Don’t think of it as the ultimate ground of reality, at least if you’re imagining something that exists apart and persists forever.
I said at the end of that talk that I would connect the observable truth of impermanence, of change, to action. I’m making good on that promise now.
Let me open this talk with another koan, a brief story, from the record of Dogen’s teaching, together with his brief commentary on it:
Mayu, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?”
“Although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”
“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk.
Mayu just kept fanning himself.
The monk bowed deeply.
Dogen’s commentary:
The actualization of the buddha dharma, the vital path of its authentic transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent; because of that, the wind of the buddha house brings forth the gold of the earth and ripens the cream of the long river.
Here we meet yet another monk who has gained some insight—and who is stuck in emptiness. He thinks the nature of wind somehow exists apart from wind. He thinks he’s grabbed the lion by its tail and caged it. He’s not yet become the lion.
We know the wind as it beats against us. As we move the fan. We know the lion as it roars. As we roar.
The nature of emptiness can’t be expressed as an idea (even this one): Emptiness is only ever actualized, enacted. Emptiness is expressed as action. The action of the wind. The action of my hand moving the fan.
Action is motion. The best definition of life I’ve ever heard, from a biologist, is movement. Living things are moving things. And everything is alive, even supposedly dead things. Corpses and logs are expressing a form of life we call decomposition. They’ll eventually spawn forms of life that appear to be moving faster for a while, until those life forms “die” and decompose.
Motion is change. Impermanence.
What does it mean to say the nature of wind is permanent? What does permanent mean here?
Change. Wind moves as wind.
In my last talk I also said another core tenet of Zen Buddhism is that our default mode is to resist the reality of change. We cling to whatever evokes pleasurable feelings. We’re averse to whatever threatens to take away pleasurable feelings. We remain willfully ignorant to the reality of impermanence; to our inability to avoid change. We seek a safe haven in which nothing changes, and in which we needn’t change.
Mayu is demonstrating a more viable path. The path of activity beyond ideas. The path of becoming a Buddha. Dogen said, “Buddha-nature and becoming a Buddha always occur simultaneously.” The nature of wind and wind always occur simultaneously.
Our ideas also are activity. We must permit them to change. I never get myself into more trouble than when I cling to a misguided viewpoint or idea about some situation and myself and others in relation to it.
It’s 90 degrees out. Mayu is hot. He fans himself. An appropriate response.
I’ve taken offense at what someone else has said or done. My blood is boiling. I fan the flames. An appropriate response? Likely not.
How are my preexisting, fixed views conditioning the experience and my reading of it? Can I let my views be susceptible to change? Can I remain open to newness and possibility, including newness and possibility within myself? Can I remain truly present and curious? If so, perhaps I’ll use my fan to cool the room, or even to extinguish the flames, rather than fanning them.
Zazen—our practice of sitting still—is activity. It’s the activity of becoming a Buddha; of learning to act as a Buddha acts. Finding the still point on the crest of the wave of impermanence. Maintaining our balance there. Knowing how precious this passing moment is and how precious those with whom we briefly share it are. Knowing this in our bones. Moving as the wind, roaring as the lion, to enact that knowing.
Turning Words 