Category: Koans

Rohatsu 2024: Enlightenment Beyond Belief

Jeff

I gave this talk today at our Rohatsu Zazenkai. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 32 in The Gateless Gate, A Non-Buddhist Questions the Buddha:

A non-Buddhist in all earnestness asked the World-Honored One, “I do not ask about words, I do not ask about no-words.” The World-Honored One just sat still. The non-Buddhist praised him, saying, “The World-Honored One in his great benevolence and great mercy has opened the clouds of my delusion and enabled me to enter the Way.” Then, bowing, he took his leave. Ananda asked Buddha, “What did the non-Buddhist realize that made him praise you so much?” The World-Honored One replied, “He is just like a fine horse that runs even at the shadow of a whip.”

Tomorrow is Rohatsu in Japan, the holiday when Zen Buddhists remember Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment. I suppose this is Buddhism’s Big Bang. Pow! as our friend José Ramirez likes to say. 

This koan is perfect for the occasion. Its form is so familiar. A seeker brings a question to a teacher. The teacher responds. The student finally breaks through. It’s her Big Bang. Pow!

Your meetings with Fran and me are just like that, right? 🙂

In most of our koans, the teacher is abbot of a Zen monastery in China living hundreds of years after the Buddha died. The seeker is a resident monk. They’ve each taken hundreds of monastic vows. They’ve identified as Buddhists in every way. In what they wear, how they eat, how they pass each day and year, each full of recurring ritual forms and practices.

In today’s koan, the teacher is Shakyamuni Buddha himself. I’ve read Koun Yamada’s translation of this koan because he refers to the seeker as a “non-Buddhist.” I find this a bit amusing, because I’m not sure we can say Buddhism even existed at the time, at least not as a tradition with stably established forms and practices. The Zen tradition as we eventually would come to know it certainly did not exist yet. Other translations of this koan refer to the visitor as an “outsider” or a “nonbeliever,” as if belief had anything to do with Zen. 

While the structure of this koan is familiar, much of its content is quite different. The Chinese, who developed koan practice using anecdotes from their own experience and unique cultural context, seemed to want a handful of koans featuring the historical Buddha, perhaps as one more way to assure themselves and others they were connected to him. They crafted a few koans from snippets of much earlier Buddhist texts.

We also get this interesting exchange between the Buddha and Ananda, his cousin and attendant, at the end of the koan. Ananda often is portrayed as the Buddha’s foil in the Pali Canon and in Chinese koans. If the Buddha is Laurel, Ananda is Hardy. We’ll return to their exchange in a moment.

Let’s look at the question this unnamed seeker brings to the Buddha: “I do not ask about words, I don’t ask about no-words.” This sentence doesn’t quite form a question. It seems inarticulate—like the speaker is on the edge of his own awareness and understanding and can barely find the words to express himself. An insight is emerging, but this seeker doesn’t yet know what he knows.

He’s asking about what the sutras call form and emptiness. Form is words. Emptiness is no-words.

This seeker is sensing this seeming binary is a trap.

Form is our starting point early in life; even throughout life for many, if not most, of us. First, we take things—beings, objects, concepts—as concrete, separate things with essences.

Later one may begin to sense this understanding of things is amiss. We start to question whether things are so solid and separate. We begin to penetrate the illusion of separateness. We open to Oneness. Emptiness. 

Eventually we may come to realize form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form. But as long as we’re relying on words and no-words, things and no-things, and even if we’re saying one is the other, we’re still holding onto ideas to some extent. We’re still partially in the conceptual realm. 

The Buddha’s visitor senses that “form is Emptiness, Emptiness is form” doesn’t quite get to the heart of the matter.

The Buddha knows exactly where this seeker is at and what he is asking. What is the Buddha’s response? 

Presence. Pure and simple.

This response affirms what the seeker intuits. The Buddha is saying, “Yes, this is it. What you see, feel, and know is what I see, feel, and know.”

With this encounter, the knowledge that was on the perimeter of the visitor’s awareness a moment ago is now in his bones, not as an idea. Pow!

What about the Buddha’s exchange with Ananda? What’s with the horse and whip. This was a common metaphor where and when the Buddha lived—and this was high praise of the visitor.

It’s a rather grim image. Horses were trained with whips in those days, as they often still are today. Particularly willful or slow learning horses were struck with a full crack of the whip. A horse that’s a bit more insightful, we might say for purposes of the Buddha’s analogy, just needs to feel the coiled whip held against its body. An even more insightful horse just needs to see the whip. The Buddha’s visitor didn’t need much nudging. Seeing the shadow of the whip was enough.

On Tuesday I was in Washington, D.C., for a dinner hosted by Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Alissa. Sheikh Alissa heads the Muslim World League, which includes clerics and religious scholars from all Muslim countries and promotes moderate forms of Islam.

Sheikh Alissa played a leading role in producing the 2019 Charter of Mecca, which was endorsed by 1,200 Muslim clerics and scholars. Here are the first three of its 30 principles:

  1. All people, regardless of their different ethnicities, races, and nationalities, are equal under God.
  2. We reject religious and ethnic claims of “preference.” [The idea that there is a chosen people.]
  3. Differences among people in their beliefs, cultures and natures are part of God’s will and wisdom.

In his remarks Tuesday, Sheikh Alissa said, regardless or our religious or non-religious beliefs, we all come from and return to the same source. Speaking in his religious idiom, he asked whether God wants the destructive, belief-based conflict we see everywhere today. He answered his own question with an emphatic no. Sheikh Alissa discourages Muslims from drawing hard sectarian lines within Islam or hard lines between Muslims and non-Muslims. 

Of course, a history of drawing hard lines between and within religions, isn’t unique to Islam. We see this happening in some expressions of every major religion. Buddhism doesn’t get a free pass. Some Zen teachers before and during WWII fanned the flames of ideologically based hatred raging across the globe, doing so in explicitly religious terms. Many Buddhist monks in Burma (Myanmar) support militarism in defense of ethnic and religious purity.

What the Buddha saw, and what we seek and see, isn’t something exclusive and proprietary. It doesn’t depend upon having the “right” beliefs or the “right” practices or the “right” authorizations. It doesn’t depend upon anything because it’s always right here. We depend upon it. We are it.

“I and all sentient beings and the great Earth itself attain enlightenment simultaneously,” the Buddha purportedly said upon his enlightenment. Dependent co-arising. Interdependence. 

Now, our conscious recognition of this—the personal experience of enlightenment—is likely to depend upon our openness to that recognition, and our acceptance of it once it begins to dawn. Upon turning toward, not away from, our aching for this recognition, as the Buddha’s visitor did. Upon our diligent effort to break down our own defenses to that recognition. 

Seek, and you shall find. Right under the North Star. Right under the Bodhi tree. Right under your nose.

Every Day is a Good Day

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit today, the day before Thanksgiving. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 6 in the Blue Cliff Record:

Yunmen gave a teaching, saying, “I’m not asking you about before the fifteenth day of the month. Why not say a word about after the fifteenth day of the month?”

He answered himself, “Every day is a good day.”

The full moon is a metaphor for enlightenment in Zen. In the Chinese lunar calendar, the full moon appears mid-month, so the monks training with Yunmen would have heard him asking them what it’s like to be enlightened. 

They seem confounded, so Yunmen answers his own question, “Every day is a good day.” 

What does he mean? Is he taunting the monks by saying every day is a good day only after the full moon rises; only after one is enlightened? I don’t think so. 

I expect there was a long silence before Yunmen answered himself. He would have known the monks were thinking to themselves, “I have no idea what it’s like after the full moon. Why are you asking me? I can only imagine my life right now, before the full moon.” 

Living in close quarters with Yunmen, the monks also would have seen him getting sick, getting frustrated occasionally, sometimes forgetting things and making mistakes, after the full moon; after enlightenment.

I think Yunmen truly means every day is a good day, including the days before the full moon. These days when the monks think the moon is hidden and they lack enlightenment.

Yunmen’s question simultaneously meets the monks where they believe they’re at and contests their self-understanding. Yunmen is addressing seekers; people seeking enlightenment. They’re sure they don’t have it or haven’t yet found it. More than one of these seekers would have asked Yunmen, “What’s enlightenment like? I want to know. Tell me.”

Yunmen turns this question back at them. “You’re always telling me about your troubled lives before the full moon; before enlightenment,” he seems to be saying. “Tell me something about your life beyond the full moon, right here and now.”

But they’re dumbfounded. 

Yunmen’s question both confirms the monks’ belief that there’s a time before enlightenment and a time after it and challenges that belief. Yunmen implies they can describe the enlightenment experience and invites them to do so.

If Yunmen thinks they can describe life beyond the full moon, then perhaps it’s not the idealized life they imagine. Perhaps it’s still a life with troubles.

If only someone had just groaned about their splitting headache or the lukewarm tea.

Yunmen’s question divides time into before and after, but, as I’ve said, his response doesn’t differentiate between the days before the full moon and the days after it. No before. No after.

Troubled or untroubled. Our awareness attuned to the light that shines within or not. Grateful or not.

Every day is a good day.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Kill the Buddha

Jeff

I gave this talk on November 8, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen sesshin. A recording follows the text (which is lightly edited).

Our koan for this sesshin is Linji’s famous line, “If you meet the Buddha on a road, kill him.”

If I had to pick just one koan or phrase to sum up all Zen teachings and their spirit, this just might be it. It certainly would be among my top few. 

This line isn’t a koan exactly. It doesn’t appear in any of our koan collections. We find it instead in The Record of Linji, a compilation of Linji’s talks. He said something more like, “If you meet the Buddha, slay the Buddha,” but the line sometimes is transformed and used informally as a koan.

Linji lived during the ninth century, the heyday of Zen in China. He’s credited with founding the Rinzai line of Zen. The Zen stream we’re in is mostly Soto-derived. Maezumi Roshi, who founded the White Plum Asanga (with Bernie Glassman), initially received transmission from his father, a prominent Soto teacher who did not practice with koans. But Maezumi also studied with and later received transmission from the lay Rinzai teacher Koryu Osaka, as well as Hakuun Yasatani, a Soto reformer who studied koans with his teacher, Harada Daiun Sogaku, who had taken up koan practice with Rinzai teachers. So our stream is unusual; we’re a bit of a mix. I think we can fairly claim Linji as our own.

You can imagine that Linji got some quizzical looks when he gave the talk that includes this line. For me, this line has resonances with some of the deepest, and, I think, most misunderstood wisdom in my birth tradition, Christianity. I’m talking about one of the most remote and, for some, most suspect corners of that tradition: its contemplative or mystical strain.

I’m conscious that we’re Zen practitioners, and that Zen is a non-theistic religious tradition, and that some of us have an uneasy relationship with theism, maybe even an aversion to it. But let me take a a very brief detour nonetheless, if you’ll permit me. I promise to return to Zen soon to make the connection I want to make. 

In the Christian tradition, the notion of idolatry arises in the Old Testament, in Jewish scripture, in the book of Exodus. Many of us are familiar with this story. Moses has an encounter with God, who gives him the Ten Commandments on stone tablets to bring to the Israelites as God’s covenant with them. The first commandment has been translated several ways but boils down to something like this: “I am God. You shall have no other God before me. Don’t make graven images of me. Don’t worship anything in my place.” 

When Moses returns to camp, he finds the Israelites partying and worshiping a golden calf. Moses has a fit. He smashes the tablets and the golden calf. Party over. Fortunately for the Israelites, they repent, and God replaces the stone tablets.

In Jewish tradition to this day, in this spirit, one doesn’t use the word God. When we see God in print, we might see an asterisk in the place of the “o” (G*d). Or we might hear the word Yahweh, but see it spelled without the vowels (YHWH). Yahweh translates to something like “I am” or “He that is.” Christian monks later translate Yahweh as Jehovah.

So, as we can see, there is this uneasiness with representation in Jewish tradition; with thingifying. There’s an emphasis on being. On ultimate reality as verb, not noun. As pure, vital, vibrating presence.

To my taste, the deepest thinking, the deepest feeling, the furthest and most insightfully seeing later Christian practitioners and teachers pick up this aversion to representation and push it even further. In the Middle Ages, for example, we get the great German mystic Meister Eckhart, who was very quotable. He was famous for saying things like, “Pray God that we may lose God for the sake of finding God.”

Alright, back to Zen, and to the soil out of which it grew. Soil that’s different in some ways and not so different in other ways. 

There always were local gods in India, in China, and in Japan. There still are, even to this day, in Japan, from which we’ve received the Zen tradition. Very local deities. In Japan, today people have Shinto weddings and Zen funerals, with a bit of Christianity mixed in along the way for some. The religious culture there is very syncretistic. But long before Buddhism arrived, and long afterwards, people have perceived gods everywhere in Japan. 

So, it’s fair to ask if Buddhism made a clean break from the theism that was pervasive in India when it arose and that was pervasive in the places Buddhism traveled over time. Not exactly. The strong monotheism that developed in the Western world in antiquity won’t contend with Buddhism for some time, but we don’t exactly see Buddhism dispatching with all hints of forms of theism before that encounter, in my view. 

If we focus solely on what the historical Buddha seems to have taught, it’s probably fair to say there was a clean break from the forms of theism present in his time. He didn’t so much reject theism, as dodge it. He seemed to say, not unlike Meister Eckhart, “Don’t get so twisted up about ideas like god.” 

But those who follow the founder of a tradition have a way of messing it up, as we see time and again. There are gods and proto gods in early Buddhism, and even Zen, I’m inclined to say. Look at this beautiful tapestry above us with its many Buddhas, and its Bodhisattvas who seem to have divine qualities. Think about our meal chants. We chant about mythical Buddhas before the historical Buddha, Buddhas yet to appear, and Bodhisattvas who are larger than life. 

But I do think most of the old Zen teachers we remember, and most present ones too, are offering us something different. Most Zen teachers throughout space and time double down on the notion that there really is no need for a reified concept of the ultimate. 

And in our koan, “If you meet the Buddha on a road, kill him,” we’re clearly being told to smash our idols. I mean really smash them. Smash them by not even positing the existence of something we could idolize. Zen doesn’t offer us a lot of fodder for that. 

But if we look—and we humans don’t have to look too hard—we can find (or concoct) ideas in Zen to thingify and fixate on. Take the Absolute and the relative, for instance. Some theists drawn to Zen might even draw parallels to God and Jesus as the Absolute manifest in and as the relative. 

But we shouldn’t read too much into or hold too tightly to these metaphors. I’d say to any theist interested or not interested in Zen, “Whatever God is to you, I sure hope God is not an idea.” 

None of these metaphors, none of these ideas, none of these concepts that the Buddha didn’t want us to get twisted up about can resolve the mystery. A mystery the resolution of which is as plain as the nose on your face. Is the nose on your face. 

The mystery doesn’t need resolving, thank you. The mystery is resolved here and now. 

We mistake so much for the ultimate, including the idea of the ultimate. That tendency can be so subtle and insidious. 

Teachings and teachers can become idols, for sure. Hopefully, any good teacher will recognize this and deflect it.

We can have our political saviors and our political devils. Some of us might want to kill those devils. But the devil is just another idol. It’s a kind of anti-God idol. 

Relationships, I think, are a domain in which we often idolize. We often expect too much of those with whom we’re intimate. It’s a kind of category error. I think one reason we can get so, so incredibly frustrated with intimate partners is that we’re idolizing them, even as they drive us mad, and we criticize them. We want them to serve a godlike function for us. To ultimately ground us, to be our salvation, to be our paradise. 

Even more subtly I can make myself an idol, good and/or bad, God and/or devil. That’s what our self-sense inevitably is, I suppose. Our self-sense, or ego or whatever you want to call it, is a facsimile of our being. It’s a partial representation of it. It’s a construct that’s useful, and with which we can become at ease if we don’t hold it too tightly. If we don’t inflate it or deflate it. If we’re humble.

(By the way, my favorite definition of humility is from a Carmelite monk who said it’s not thinking little of yourself but thinking of yourself very little.)

When we kill the Buddha, when we kill all idols, it’s only then that we’re truly able to realize ourselves as Buddha, and all others as Buddha. Killing the Buddha opens that possibility for us. It just comes storming in. 

The deepest meaning of the holy truths cannot be contained or represented. It can’t be embodied in or as just one thing, because the deepest meaning of the holy truths is nothing less than everything. Just as it’s manifesting right now. 

Another way to translate Linji’s expression “Kill the Buddha”—to translate all the teachings is—this is it. Full stop. 

We’re grounded in everything, all at once, all the time. We must discover that ground. We must discover the self as that ground. 

The bad news is there’s nothing discreet we can hold onto. The good news is there’s no risk of falling. 

Just don’t try too hard to define everything; to contain it. Let it be. Let it be you. When we do our three bows, we’re honoring the three treasures. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. 

Let’s honor the three treasures. Let’s honor ourselves; let’s honor everybody else; let’s honor everything. Let’s just not idolize things.

So, if you meet the Buddha on a road, extend a hand. Offer him a place to rest his weary frame. A meal, a cup of tea. Pour one for yourself, as well. Sit down and enjoy his company. Offer him the pleasure of your company.

Te-shan’s Empty Bowls: A Reflection on Vulnerability

Jeff

I gave this talk on October 31, 2024. A recording follows the text (which is lightly edited).

A big theme for me this year has been vulnerability. That theme has been very present to me personally, and there a lot of people in my life, including many of you, for whom I sense it’s been a theme, as well. 

As many of you know, I had a big surgery earlier in the year to correct a problem that caused a big medical emergency last fall; a close call. After that surgery, I learned that three good friends about my age all had terminal cancer. As of last Friday, they’ve all died. Vicky, I know, recently has lost people close to her. People here have family members and other loved ones who are struggling in one way or another. 

We’ve seen wars. We’ve seen hurricanes and flooding. Somehow vulnerability just seems like a big theme this year. 

So recently my mind was wandering, and I found myself thinking about koans in which vulnerability is a theme. The one I’m going to read and say a few words about tonight is the first one that came to mind. At sunrise sit last week I spoke about another one, but this one is the very first one I thought of. 

It helps before one hears this koan to know a little bit about the characters in it, so let me tell you a little bit about them. I’m going to say more about each of them after I read the koan. 

The first character is Te-shan. He is a famous Zen teacher; famous in China at the time, famous throughout history to this day. He’s, say, about 80 years old in this koan. He was the head of a major monastery in China. This is the early ninth century, which historians generally think of as the peak of ancient Chinese civilization. It’s the heyday of Zen in China.

The other two characters are two of his senior students. Hsüeh-feng, is maybe about half Te-shan’s age. He’s 40, let’s say. And his Dharma brother Yen-t’ou, the head monk, is maybe a little bit older. They’re both senior students in this monastery. They’re not yet transmitted teachers, but they’ve been in the monastery a long time and they have a lot of responsibilities, no doubt. So, you’ll hear their names, and I’ll say a little bit more about each of them after I read the koan.

This is Case 13 in The Gateless Gate. It’s called Te-shan: Bowls in Hand:

Te-shan one day descended to the dining hall bowls in hand. Hsüeh-feng asked him, “Where are you going with your bowls in hand, Old Teacher? The bell has not rung and the drum has not sounded. Te-shan turned and went back to his room.” 

Actually, that’s just the first part of the koan, and it was all I was thinking about when I was thinking about this koan in relation to vulnerability. I’d forgotten about what comes next. When I read the whole thing, I realized I got even more than I bargained for on this theme. So here’s where the koan goes from there:

Hsüeh-feng brought up the matter with Yen-t’ou, his Dharma brother. Yen-t’ou said, “Te-shan, great as he is, does not yet know the last word.” 

Hearing about this, Te-shan sent for Yen-t’ou and asked, “Do you not approve of this old monk?” Yen-t’ou whispered his meaning. Te-shan said nothing further. 

Next day, when Te-shan took the high seat before his assembly, his presentation was very different from usual. Yen-t’ou came to the front of the hall, rubbing his hands and laughing loudly, saying, “How delightful! How delightful! Our old boss has got hold of the last word. From now on no one under heaven can outdo him.”

So let me say a bit more about each of these characters. Te-shan, as a young man, had been an expert on and renowned for his insight into the Diamond Sutra. He went around preaching about the Diamond Sutra as a young man. Impressing people; going to see teacher after teacher, trying to impress them with his knowledge of the sutras generally and this sutra in particular.

One day he came across a wise old woman who wasn’t so impressed and essentially told him, “So what? I don’t think the real Dharma—the real thing—is in these words on this page. I can’t even read.” Te-shan was shaken by this and, to his credit, he took her words and her insight to heart. He went deeper.

Te-shan matured and eventually became a teacher. He looked for some new way to teach the Dharma. We know Te-shan ultimately became famous for not teaching with words and not teaching with silence either, but instead, holding up his teacher stick as his teaching. He sometimes whacked his students with his stick, in good Punch-and-Judy form. Let’s hope it was more of a gentle tap!

I think it’s fair to say that Te-shan’s holding up his stick is an expression of the middle way. To borrow some words Jay introduced to us a couple weeks ago, his teaching was both apophatic and cataphatic. It’s at once the via positiva and the via negative. It’s neither extreme. Te-shan wants people to realize that this is it. It’s all right here; simply right here. 

And it’s probably also fair to say that stick is a bit of a prop for Te-shan. When, we ought to ask, does his stick become a prop? Maybe in that phase of his life, the stick is being weaponized a bit as a symbol of strength. Is it still masking a bit of vulnerability? Is it more a shield than a weapon? Hold that thought for just a minute.

So what about Hsüeh-feng? Well, I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but think, Hsüeh-feng’s reaction to his old teacher coming down to dinner at the wrong time, bowls in hand, is a little bit scolding or a little bit prideful. In fact, I can’t help but see his raising the matter with his Dhrama brother Yen-t’ou as maybe a little bit of tattling. 

What is Hsüeh-feng clinging to? Maybe his role in the monastery. Maybe his status. Maybe his perfection of the forms. And, if so, might these things be masking vulnerability—the kind of things we sometimes cling to as a false projection of strength, that mask the deeper reality of our vulnerability.

What to say about his Dharma brother Yen-t’ou? I think Yen-t’ou comes across pretty well in this koan. Yen-t’ou is very important to Xuefang, actually. I think it’s fair to say Yen-t’ou becomes Hsüeh-feng’s main teacher.

There’s a story about Yen-t’ou from another koan that I’ll just mention briefly. The culmination of that koan relates back to Fran’s talk yesterday morning. Those of you who heard it will recognize a metaphor she used. In this other koan Hsüeh-feng is lamentiong to Yen-t’ou that, “My heart is not yet at peace. My mind is not yet at peace.” Yen-t’ou says, “Well, tell me about your experience. Tell me what you’ve experienced on this path.”

Hsüeh-feng tells Yen-t’ou about a realization of emptiness he had; a kensho moment. He tells him about another moment of insight he had. He’s reporting these profoundly moving experiences we associate with enlightenment, realization, insight, but he’s still saying they didn’t set his heart to rest. In fact, he says he went to their teacher at some point and asked whether he would ever experience what the ancestors experienced.

What did Te-shan do? He hit Hsüeh-feng with his stick and said, “It’s as if you’re a bucket whose bottom suddenly dropped out!” (That’s the metaphor Fran used in her talk yesterday.)

At this point in their exchange, Yen-t’ou says, “Don’t you know that what enters from the gate cannot be the treasure of the house? If you want to propagate the great teaching, it must flow point by point from within your own breast to cover heaven and earth. Only then will it be the action of someone with spiritual power, only when it comes from inside you.” 

Pow! With this, Hsüeh-feng had a great realization, true realization, deep and lasting realization. 

Here we see Hsüeh-feng had been clinging to kensho experiences. Flashes of insight as a source of strength or representation of his strength; of the spiritual power he’s seeking. I think Xeufeng is also looking for eternal knowledge and clinging to supposed certainties as he imagines he is finding them. 

Now, here’s where our original koan really gets playful: What’s this bit about the last word, and what did Yen-t’ou whisper to Te-shan? After Hsüeh-feng tattles on Te-shan, you can imagine him flying into a tizzy when Yen-t’ou says, “Te-shan, great as he is, doesn’t yet know the last word.”

“What! There’s a last word! There’s a secret I don’t yet know?” Te-shan thought he knew it all already, a bit like the young Te-shan with his command of the Diamond Sutra.

So, when Te-shan came down and asked Yen-t’ou whether he still approved of his old teacher, what did Yen-t’ou whisper to Te-shan? I imagine he whispered, “Oh, my old friend, you are more than okay.” I imagine Yen-t’ou thinking to himself as he said this, “You are more than okay, even as your mind slips away; even as dementia takes over.” 

Then I imagine Yen-t’ou whispering to Te-shan, “Hey, let’s have some fun with Hsüeh-feng. Tomorrow when you show up in the Dharma hall, stride right in like a peacock! Speak loudly, boldly! Let them know you really do know the last word after all!” 

Whatever false strength Te-shan might have been projecting earlier in life with his impressive knowledge of the Diamond Sutra or by whacking students with his stick, it’s all been stripped away as we meet him here. He’s vulnerable. Fully exposed.

How does all this end? Well, Yen-t’ou, precocious spiritual powerhouse that he was, dies a couple of decades later without any Dharma heirs. There’s no line from Yen-t’ou. Hsüeh-feng, plodding as he seems to be in this koan, keeps at it. He takes it all to heart. He lets his heart break open. He becomes vulnerable. The vulnerable anchor of two of the five main houses of Zen that continue to this very day.

We find our strength in vulnerability.

Nowhere to go

Jeff

I gave this talk on August 29, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen sesshin. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 1 in The Blue Cliff Record:

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” Bodhidharma said, “Empty, without holiness.” The Emperor said, “Who is facing me?” Bodhidharma replied, “I don’t know.” The Emperor did not understand. After this Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtse River and came to the king­dom of Wei.

Later the Emperor brought this up to Master Chih and asked him about it. Master Chih asked, “Does your majesty know who this man is?” The Emperor said, “I don’t know.” Master Chih said, “He is the Mahasattva Avalokitesvara, transmitting the Buddha Mind Seal.” The Emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go invite (Bodhidharma to re­ turn). Master Chih told him, “Your majesty, don’t say that you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still wouldn’t re­ turn.”

So let’s contrast Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma again, this time focusing on their respective moments of coming and going.

It must have been an even bigger deal to visit an emperor back then than it is now. Today many of the handful of monarchs that remain in the world are part of constitutional democracies. Their power is limited, not absolute. Emperor Wu’s temporal power was comparatively unlimited.

I have a bit of personal experience with the type of encounter described in this koan. Several years ago I attended an event at Buckingham Palace with my wife, Esther, who is British. It was the 50thanniversary celebration for a scholarship program Queen Elizabeth created in memory of John F. Kennedy. Each year the Kennedy Scholarship allows a cohort of British college students to enter graduate programs in the U.S. after they receive their undergraduate degrees in the U.K. All past recipients of the scholarship, Esther among them, were invited to the anniversary celebration. 

The queen wasn’t there, but she sent Prince William to represent her. Esther had told me for weeks before the event that I was obliged to bow if we met him. Having grown up in the U.S., I’m rather allergic to the idea of monarchy, so I bristled at the thought of bowing. 

(Yes, I get the irony. Now I bow all the time as a Zen teacher.)

I was incredibly relieved when this prince, who now is next in line to be king, offered me his hand and said, “Hi, I’m William. And you?” Perhaps that’s the less formal, 21st century equivalent of saying, “Who is this standing before me?” as Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma. 

Now, imagine I had said, “I don’t know,” when William asked who I was, just as Bodhidharma responded to the emperor. That certainly would have drawn an awkward laugh! William could have been forgiven for moving on rather quickly to meet the next guest if I’d done that.

But that’s exactly what Bodhidharma did when Emperor Wu asked him to say something about himself. Bodhidharma responded honestly—and, he’s also testing the emperor. Can the emperor see Bodhidharma, and himself and all else, from the Absolute perspective?

We don’t know whether the emperor was receiving other guests that day, so we don’t know whether he moved on quickly, as I expect William would have done had I responded to him like Bodhidharma responded to Emperor Wu. We do see that the emperor didn’t know what to make of Bodhidharma’s unusual response to his rather ordinary question. Can you blame him?

In fairness to Bodhidharma, and unlike me as I met William, the emperor would have had some idea why everyone was talking about this wandering monk now in his presence. The emperor’s question seems to invite Bodhidharma to say more about why people consider him so remarkable. “I’ve heard so much about you from others. Your teaching is unconventional. Who do you say you are?”

Some notes on this koan I have say that, according to Harada Roshi, a famous 20th century Rinzai teacher, Bodhidharma was very interested in teaching the emperor, but he was disappointed by the emperor’s lack of understanding. Harada Roshi says that’s why Bodhidharma departed. If any of you doing koan work ever thinks Fran or I is dismissive when we don’t think you’ve quite yet penetrated a koan, just remember Bodhidharma’s appraisal of Emperor Wu! The emperor was given just one chance, and he blew it by Bodhidharma’s standards. No wonder the guy has a reputation for being a curmudgeon.

Bodhidharma evidently thought there was someplace better to be; someplace to go; a better use of his time. According to legend, he goes away to occupy an abandoned temple with a few students. Perhaps that truly was a better use of his time and energy. Who knows whether we’d have the Zen tradition, and so whether we’d be sitting her today, if Bodhidharma had given the emperor a second chance.

The emperor feels regret and wants to chase after Bodhidharma. Chih says there’s no point sending a messenger. Bodhidharma wouldn’t return. From a relative perspective, Bodhidharma won’t return because he thinks his time is better spent elsewhere. From an absolute perspective, Avalokiteshvara doesn’t come or go. Compassion pervades the whole universe, existing right here and now.

So the emperor and his messengers stay put. Bodhidharma certainly had given the emperor much to reflect upon. And there truly was nowhere for the emperor to go. Nowhere he needed to go. Just as Bodhidharma found his proper place teaching other wanderers and laying the foundation for the Zen tradition—building the temple in which we now practice—the emperor continued to perform his function at that point in history, including building physical temples in which others could practice.

There is merit in the emperor’s temple-building from a relative perspective—and I hope he also came to know there is no merit from an absolute perspective. No cosmic scorecard. I hope we also grasp this teaching.

And I hope and trust Bodhidharma understood this about his own life’s work, too. He meritoriously committed himself to helping others discover there’s no ultimate merit. That was his karma. His function was no more important than an emperor or cobbler or baker or candlestick maker.

The universe grants each of us admission irrevocably. We can’t be kicked out, nor get an upgrade.

Two Perspectives

Jeff

I gave this talk on August 27, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen sesshin. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 1 in The Blue Cliff Record:

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” Bodhidharma said, “Empty, without holiness.” The Emperor said, “Who is facing me?” Bodhidharma replied, “I don’t know.” The Emperor did not understand. After this Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtse River and came to the king­dom of Wei.

Later the Emperor brought this up to Master Chih and asked him about it. Master Chih asked, “Does your majesty know who this man is?” The Emperor said, “I don’t know.” Master Chih said, “He is the Mahasattva Avalokitesvara, transmitting the Buddha Mind Seal.” The Emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to go invite (Bodhidharma to re­ turn). Master Chih told him, “Your majesty, don’t say that you will send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still wouldn’t re­ turn.”

This koan focuses us on two perspectives we see time and again in Zen teachings. We have several names for them, like the relative and the Absolute or the lower truth and the higher truth. In this koan, Emperor Wu represents one perspective and Bodhidharma represents the other. It’s obvious which is which.

When the emperor asks Bodhidharma for the essence of the holy teaching, the adjective “holy” implies that teachings and all else can be divided into the categories sacred and profane, or mundane. This is the relative perspective.

When Bodhidharma replies, “nothing holy,” he is contesting this division. This is the Absolute perspective.

They’re also channeling these different perspectives when each speaks the seemingly identical phrase, “I don’t know.” There’s relative not knowing and Absolute not knowing.

This koan seems to portray the emperor and Bodhidharma as reversing roles. The penniless, unkempt and unshaven, wandering hermit is the sage. The emperor is the fool; the court jester. The koan almost seems to demand that we read it this way.

But is this the only or best reading of it?

The pioneering French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who died over a century ago, said, “[t]he sacred and profane [i.e., mundane] are always and everywhere conceived by the human intellect as separate . . . as two worlds with nothing in common. . .. They are different in kind.” Most of us would have little difficulty sorting what we value, and our values, into “mundane” and “sacred” categories. Most of us sense intuitively that things in these categories don’t mix naturally. 

Your wedding ring is a mundane item from my perspective, worth only its weight in precious metal and stone, and vice versa. I certainly could put more money to use, as could you. Shall we exchange our rings and then cash them in? That’s a trade neither of us is likely to make.

Contemporary researchers have confirmed Durkheim’s insight. We all make distinctions between mundane items and commitments, on the one hand, and sacred items and commitments about which we feel strong moral conviction, on the other hand. Our sacred values are less subject to change, threats to them evoke strong emotions, and the conviction they inspire can inspire us to take great risks and make costly sacrifices.

Each of us has our deep convictions and commitments. First principles we consider holy truths. I have mine, and I bet you do, too. If you don’t yet know what they are, you haven’t yet had an encounter that would reveal them.

When we come to Zen and are exposed to the two truths teaching, we not only may have our eyes opened to the Absolute perspective; our ears may hear it as a call to abide there, as Bodhidharma seems to do. It’s the higher truth after all, isn’t it? 

I certainly was stranded there for a time. And I thought the higher truth demanded a consistently yielding orientation. I acquired a new “should do,” which was letting go of my convictions and commitments whenever they conflicted with others’ needs, convictions, and commitments. I could give you numerous examples.

But I ultimately discovered this approach didn’t produce much of genuine value to anyone. Truth was, I still had my own deeply felt needs, convictions, and commitments. Like the buffalo who tries to pass through a window frame in another famous koan (Case 38 in The Gateless Gate), it seems I had a tail that kept getting stuck and wouldn’t let me pass completely to where I thought I was supposed to go; to the supposed other side.

Understood this way, the Absolute became a hiding place. I wasn’t truly showing up.

Genuine moral dilemmas arise when two goods collide. Two truths. Two rights. A choice between something we know to be right and something we know to be wrong isn’t a genuine moral dilemma.

Likewise, genuine conflict arises when two or more people meet as they truly are, and when they discover genuine differences. Sometimes yielding can be a sensible and appropriate thing to do. We must choose our battles, as they say.

But inhabiting the Absolute perspective doesn’t imply retreat to a realm of idealized abstraction, in which all distinctions are leveled. The real higher truth loves and embraces and enlivens the relative, including our own deeply felt needs, convictions, and commitments. Both yours and mine.

From the authentic Absolute perspective, we loosen our grip on them somewhat. We gain some perspective on the relative perspective, and this can help us be more open to and accommodating of others’ needs, convictions, and commitments. But we’re not asked to deny our own completely. We neither let our truths completely rule us—have us and have their way with us—nor imagine we can or should cast them away.

Here’s the first principle of the holy teaching, as best I can discern and express it: Nonduality must include duality to be nondual.

To put that more straightforwardly as some contemplatives from other traditions would:

“Though we don’t know it yet, we are all sons and daughters of God.” That’s the medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart.

“The god wants to know itself in you.” That’s the Romantic poet Rilke.

Or, in Zen lingo, “The `all’ is none other than sentient beings and living beings. Thus, all are Buddha nature.” That’s Dogen.

Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit on August 14, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 41 in The Gateless Gate:

Bodhidhama faced the wall. The Second Ancestor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, “Your disciple’s mind has no peace yet. I beg you, Master, please put it to rest.”

Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest.”

The Second Ancestor said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”

 Bodhidharma said, “I have completely put it to rest for you.”

I want to speak briefly about meditation practice this morning—about the nuts and bolts of it. The nuts and bolts of meditation practice and the struggles to use them early on that most of us experience point to deeper truths we may discover through our practice.

Bodhidharma is regarded as our first Zen ancestor, as you know. He is said to have brought Buddhism from India to China. His student, Huike, is the Second Ancestor—the second in the line of six early teachers from which the Zen tradition developed.

Huike’s state of mind is troubled as he meets Bodhidharma and asks for help. He’s seeking peace of mind. Huike is so troubled he cuts off his arm, or so the story goes.

Many of us come to Zen practice similarly troubled. We may not be so disturbed that we’re ready to sever a limb, but we do aim to cut off certain streams of thought or psychological or emotional experiences that are agitating us.

And many of us imagine that’s the point of meditation practice. Though experienced practitioners tell us otherwise, we think quieting the mind means stopping thought and other mental experience. Certainly it must at least mean developing perfect concertation; stopping the mind from wandering at all during meditation. Right?

So we set our mind to controlling our mind. But this project is doomed to fail. The state of mind, and the understanding of mind, that we bring to practice initially can’t find its way out of the box it creates. 

Our narrow sense of self, our narrow conception of mind, is about achieving seeming safety—perhaps even about achieving certain real and legitimate forms of safety—by seemingly gaining control of our environment and our experience within it.

But the liberation we ultimately seek, the peace of mind we crave, requires giving up the quest for ultimate personal control. We must give up the pretense of being the center of the universe to experience ourselves centered in the universe. We must open the hand of thought, as Uchiyama Rōshi put it.

As we settle into practice, we’re likely to notice our mental activity attempting to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity. That type of noticing is very significant, though it’s often followed at first by further mental activity that’s critical of our mental activity that was trying to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity.

Another subtle form of noticing is noticing how we try to control the breath during meditation. Noticing that can be a doorway to liberation. We may realize the breath is doing fine on its own, without our efforts to control it. Then we may simply open the hand of thought and experience the breath rising and falling.

If we can do that, perhaps then we begin to notice the breeze rising and falling, the seasons coming and going, now liberated from the pretense that we can and must control our environment and experience. We can participate. Our participation is an influence, but total personal control is a fantasy. 

Meditation teaches us to meditate. Meditation teaches us to live. To participate. To know we’re a part of it all, to accept our part, to take part.

Meditation helps us align our personal state of mind with the active stillness of Great Mind, which is what it means to find peace of mind. We discover we’re not separate, and never were separate, from all that is, no matter what’s arising in and around us.

Our sense of in and around, of me and all else, becomes more permeable. We discover ourselves and all else as mysteriously and matter-of-factly distinct but not separate.

Sesshin Encouragement Talk

Jeff

I gave this short encouragement talk on April 27, 2024, deep into our recent sesshin. For context, see Wu-men’s comment and verse on Case 2 in The Gateless Gate in my prior post.

A young monk approaches a teacher with a question.  That teacher, now an old man, approaches a teacher with the same question.  The first teacher gets it wrong.  The second teacher gets it right.

How can we know who and what to trust?  On which teacher and teachings can we rely?

It may seem one error, one misstep, one misguided response, will deny us what we’re seeking.  The life for which we’re longing.  One misstep and we’ll forever remain hostage in the lesser life we know we’re living.

This very life is our teacher.  Its teaching?  No lesser or higher life.  One Life.  Just this life.

You may think you’re not worthy of this life, or perhaps that your life lacks worth.  

You are worthy, and this life, your life, has worth.  

You can’t be banished from the universe in any event.

Yes, our thoughts, words, and conduct have consequences.  Yes, we should intend and do our best. We should aspire to grow in wisdom and compassion.

But the universe embraces us even when our thoughts, words, and conduct fall short of our aspirations.  And even when we learn, sometimes the hard way, that what we were aspiring for ultimately isn’t the best thing we could aspire for.  The universe embraces us even as our thoughts, words, and conduct produce undesirable consequences.  

Life is offering its teaching to us everywhere and always.  Life is the teacher and the teaching we’re seeking.  

Sesshin is an opportunity for each of us to be taught by life.  To pay particularly close attention to life’s teaching.

Life’s teaching often presents itself in small packages.  An opportunity to practice our forms with a present heart-mind; with loving care.  To extend a small courtesy.  To notice the morning light dancing on the floor.  To notice the light warming the floor warming our feet.  To notice that kinhin and washing the dishes are meditation practice.  To notice the riotous calls of the geese bidding us good morning and good night.

I hope our shared life together on this sesshin has been and will continue to be a great teacher for each of us.

Pai-chang’s Fox

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen sesshin on April 26, 2024. A recording follows.

This is Case 2 in The Gateless Gate, with it We-men’s verse and comment:

Once when Pai-chang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening
together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained
behind. Pai-chang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of
Kāśyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day a monk asked me, ‘Does an
enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does
not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this I was reborn five hundred times as a fox.
Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Pai-chang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and
effect or not?”

Pai-chang said, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.”
Hearing this, the old man immediately was enlightened. Making his bows he said, “I am
released from the body of a fox. The body is on the other side of this mountain. I wish to make a
request of you. Please, Abbot, perform my funeral as for a priest.”

Pai-chang had a head monk strike the signal board and inform the assembly that after the
noon meal there would be a funeral service for a priest. The monks talked about this in wonder.
“All of us are well. There is no one in the morgue. What does the teacher mean?”After the meal, Pai-chang led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain.

And there, with his staff, he poked out the body of a dead fox. He then performed the ceremony
of cremation. That evening he took the high seat before his assembly and told the monks the
whole story.

Huang-po stepped forward and said, “As you say, the old man missed the turning word and
was reborn as a fox five hundred times. What if he had given the right answer each time he was
asked a question—what would have happened then?”

Pai-chang said, “Just step up here closer, and I’ll tell you.” Huang-po went up to Pai-chang
and slapped him in the face.

Pai-chang clapped his hands and laughed, saying, “I thought the Barbarian had a red
beard, but here is a red-bearded Barbarian.”

WU-MEN’S COMMENT
“Not falling under the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt five hundred lives as a
fox? “Not evading the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt a return to human life?
If you have the single eye of realization, you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five
hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.

WU-MEN’S VERSE
Not falling, not evading—
two faces of the same die.
Not evading, not falling—
a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.

Old.  Young.

Teacher.  Monk.

Human.  Animal.

Enlightened. Unenlightened.

Subject to the law of cause and effect.  Not subject to the law of cause and effect.

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

High.  Low.

Right,  Wrong.

These are some of the dualisms on display in this cherished and curious koan.  It presents a seeming thicket of dualisms.

There are other dualisms lurking in the thicket, connecting all the others: 

Searching.  Finding.

One.  Two.

This is the second koan in the first koan collection most Zen practitioners encounter.  It follows Mu.  There’s a logic to that.  It’s ordinary to feel trapped by dualisms.  To get lost in them.  This koan meets many of us right where we’re at when we encounter it.

It’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest dualisms.  And to discover through our doubt and questioning that they’re not as solid and confining as we believed they were.  

And yet, it’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest the boundaryless-ness, the radical Oneness, the absoluteness of the Absolute that we might experience if we reach a point in our spiritual journey where we feel splendidly awash in bliss and insight.  If we think abiding in Oneness is a separate place or state to which we can escape.

When the old man in our koan was high priest at this monastery, another monk asked him what it’s like to be enlightened.  “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”  “No,” responded the priest from his highness.  

The head priest’s response betrays more than a touch of spiritual pride.  And it tells us the peak he thinks he’s reached isn’t the real peak.  The peakless peak.

Viewed from the peakless peak, we discover that many of our dualisms cannot be dissolved completely.  And that they don’t need to be.  That we’re not trapped by them.  We can liberate them and find our liberty within them.  

It’s ordinary to get lost in dualisms.  

It’s ordinary to feel constrained by them.  

It’s ordinary to contest them and discover some are permeable to some degree.  

And yet, it’s ordinary eventually to reapproach and reclaim them, differently now, in transformed relationship to them.  

This seems to be the arc of our spiritual journey.

Here’s a personal example: The God-No God, Theist-Atheist dualism.

As I transitioned from the theistic perspective of my Roman Catholic youth and early adulthood to what I now consider a nontheistic perspective, there was a long period during which I reacted very negatively to God talk.  I had a visceral, negative reaction to it, as if fingernails were moving slowly down some cosmic blackboard.

Something has shifted since then.  God talk isn’t the religious idiom that feels most resonant to me, but I don’t feel a need to stand in opposition to it as I did for a time years ago.  Some of it resonates for me today, or at least provokes and inspires me.

I love the 12th century German mystic Meister Eckhart, for example.  He said things like, “Woulds’t thou be holy?  Do not yelp about God,” and “Pray God that we may lose God for the sake of finding God.”  Whatever God is to a given theist, I sure hope God isn’t an idea.

In both Chinese and Japanese mythology, the fox is often seen as a mischevious and wise and shapeshifting character.  A bit like us as we grow and change.  As we revolve and evolve.

Pai-chang’s turning words released the old man from the body of the fox, which was found dead outside the monastery and received a proper burial.  

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

As Wu-men’s comment tells us, the old man who asked Pai-chang for some turning words, and so also the former high priest, were none other than Pai-chang himself (and you and me, of course).

Fact.  Fiction.

“If you have the single eye of realization,” Wu-men says, “you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.”

The “release” we experience on the Zen path is not the release into formlessness a younger Pai-chang imagined.  A cosmic “get out of jail free” card.  It’s a transformation; literally, a new relationship to form, not detachment from it.

Perhaps we step on the path as a human who sees humans as more worthy than foxes—and so-called enlightened humans as more worthy than so-called unenlightened humans.  If and as we continue to walk this path and let it to transform us, we’re likely to become a human who knows humans aren’t more worthy than foxes—because we are that fox.  We will know this even as we strike a fox with a stick to stop it from sinking its rabid teeth into a child’s forearm—or maybe even kill it to protect that child.

We’ll become an enlightened person who knows enlightenment is nothing personal.  That sages and fools are equally enlightened.

I love how this koan ends.  Being lost in the thicket of dualisms can feel so heavy.  Many koans have a slapstick quality, and this one pivots in that direction as it ends.  Huang-po’s slap, and Pai-chang’s laugh, sum up this teaching nicely.

May each of us live our five hundred lives as lives of grace.  Live them, and hold life, with a loving, light touch.

The Thing Speaks for Itself

Jeff

I gave this talk today at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit.

This is Case 3 in The Gateless Gate:

Whenever Chu-Chih (J: Gutei) was asked a question, he simply raised one finger. One day a visitor asked Chu-Chih’s attendant what his master preached. The boy raised a finger. Hearing of this, Chu-Chih cut off the boy’s finger with a knife. As the boy ran from the room, Chu-Chih called to him. When the boy turned his head Chu-Chih raised a finger. The boy was suddenly enlightened.

When Chu-Chih was about to die he said to his assembled monks, “I received this one finger Zen from T’ien-lung. I used it all my life but never used it up.”

Surgeons and those who work with them tend to be a close-knit group.  Like all humans, these people make mistakes, and, like many close-knit groups, they tend to circle the wagons when mistakes happen.

Lawyers representing patients harmed by surgical mistakes or representing loved ones after a patient had died from medical malpractice used to have a hard time getting redress.  One common malpractice scenario was leaving the little surgical sponge used to soak up blood during the procedure inside the patient’s body after she was sewed up.  The sponge would cause an infection.  Often, the patient died.

The rules of legal evidence generally require proof of what happened—of who did what when—to assign responsibility and assess penalties.  Members of surgical teams accused of malpractice would simply stay mum, refusing to respond to questions about how an obvious mistake happened.  They maintained a conspiracy of silence.

For a long time, the legal system didn’t quite know how to deal with this.  Plaintiffs’ lawyers lost cases, and victims or their families, some poor already, went uncompensated.

Then some insightful lawyer stated the obvious, arguing in court that the thing simply speaks for itself.  The judge agreed, and now we have the legal doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur, Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”

This practice-journey we’re on together is our conspiracy of silence.  But it’s a different sort of conspiracy.  We’re not trying to conceal what can’t be concealed.  We’re allowing ourselves to notice and accord with—and as—that which is constantly revealing itself.

For 25 minutes at a time, we loosen our grip on our stories and yield the floor to silence.  Stories are powerful, especially arresting ones like Chü-chih cutting off the finger of a boy who didn’t yet know this life, his life, speaks for itself.  

We know from archeological sources and other evidence that our capacity for storytelling is ancient.  Our interest in story and capacity to understand it seems to be one of the most fundamental and enduring aspects of brain function.  Brain damaged kids with IQs as low as 20 still comprehend stories, even though they comprehend little else.  Kids organize play around stories. Humans of all ages construct their sense of self in narrative terms.

We’re often completely lost in our stories, as if our personal stories or the stories told by the groups to which we belong encompass and make sense of all there is to perceive and experience.  I don’t think we can completely escape our stories, but I do think we can interrupt stories that are too narrow, too partial, too parochial, or too fixed.  We can widen the aperture of the lens through which we let the light of experience in, and through which we channel the light of the world.  We can discover ourselves situated in a story vaster than we had imagined.  

So vast that simply going mum and being it is an appropriate response.

I’m partial to mysteries.  This story we live is a mystery.  A mystery that speaks for itself.  Everywhere and always.

In our meditation practice, we raise a finger to it, and as it.  Like this.  [Raising finger.]  Shhhhhhh.