Category: Practice

Layman P’ang 1

Jeff

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: 

Shame on you Shakyamuni for setting

the precedent 

of leaving home. 

Did you think it was not there – 

in your wife’s lovely face 

or your baby’s laughter? 

Did you think you had to go elsewhere 

to find it? 

Tsk, tsk. 

I am here to show you 

dear sir 

that you needn’t step 

even one sixteenth of an inch away – stay 

here – elbows dripping with soapy water 

stay here – spit up all over your chest 

stay here – steam rising in lazy curls from 

cream of wheat 

Poor Shakyamuni – sitting under the Bo tree 

miles away from home 

Venus shone all the while

My “Nowhere to Go” Mantra

Jeff

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?

Nowhere to go.

Nowhere to go.

Crossing the Flood

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on May 21, 2025. It’s based on the poem “Calm” by the early Buddhist nun Upasama:

How do you cross the flood?

You cross calmly—one step at a time, feeling for stones.

How do you cross the flood, my heart?

You cross calmly—one step at a time,

or not at all.

Shikantaza and Mindfulness (or Zen and the Other Mindfulness, Take 2)

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit today. A recording follows the text.

I gave a Thursday evening talk earlier this month about Zen and what I called “the other mindfulness”: the work of Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer, whose research has revealed the surprising power, and many health and other benefits, of simple awareness—of paying attention. You can find that talk on my blog if you didn’t hear it.

Langer describes her work as the study of mindfulness, but she chose that term without knowing about Vipassana meditation, which is more commonly called mindfulness meditation. She sees no connection between the two. In fact, she thinks mindfulness meditation can be mindless. She says mindfulness is what might happen for meditators after they meditate, and that you don’t need to meditate to experience it.

Langer’s disclaimers haven’t stopped people from making connections between mindfulness meditation and Langer’s research about the power of noticing. They’re all wishful thinkers from Langer’s perspective. But all the comparisons are made between her work and Vipassana meditation, which is very different than shikantaza, Zen’s approach to meditation.

I think there are interesting connections between Langer’s take on mindfulness and shikantaza. Those of you who heard my earlier talk will recall that I asked an AI tool, Claude, to help me explore possible connections. Here’s what it said, which I think is quite good:

1. Non-goal orientation: Both Langer’s mindfulness and shikantaza emphasize process over outcome. Langer critiques mindless pursuit of goals, while shikantaza explicitly avoids meditation as a means to an end.

2. Present-centered awareness: Both approaches value immediate experience rather than abstract analysis. Langer emphasizes noticing novelty in the present moment, which aligns with shikantaza’s open, non-discriminating awareness.

3. Rejection of rigid techniques: Langer’s approach doesn’t involve formal meditation techniques, and shikantaza is considered the most technique-free form of meditation.

4. Creative engagement: Langer emphasizes creative engagement with one’s environment, which has some resonance.

So, this morning I want to say just a bit more about what’s going on in Zen’s approach to meditation in my experience, and why I do think it supports “the other mindfulness” (Langer’s version), whatever may or may not be happening in other forms of meditation. 

Here are some of the key functions of Zen meditation and how they help us cultivate the presence of mind and being—presence to experience, to life—that Langer studies:

  • Capacity to cope. When many of us begin to meditate, we fear we won’t be able to sit still for 25 minutes. That we won’t be able to tolerate the discomfort. That the sky really will fall if we don’t respond to that email now. Maybe we fear just being with our thoughts and feelings. One of the first things meditation does is simply increase our confidence that we can bear experiences we’d cast as unbearable. This reduces adventitious suffering: the extra suffering we tend to layer over suffering we can’t avoid, like an injury, or that we choose to endure, like a surgery to repair an injury. Meditation—all or most forms, I imagine—develops our capacity to cope, and this helps us become more at ease with life, with ourselves, and with others we find challenging.
  • Inclination toward noticing. This is Langer’s territory. It’s what she studies. Shikantaza truly is the most technique-free form of meditation. We just sit. There’s nothing more to it. So all that’s left is being. All that’s left is noticing, receptivity. What do we notice? We notice leaves rustling and sirens getting louder, then quieter, then gone; we notice our stomach growl; we notice our noticing come and go. We notice impermanence. Change. The river. 
  • Nonseparation; identification with it all. The river’s water works on the stone that we are, or at least that we’ve imagined ourselves to be. It smooths it, softens it, makes it porous, dissolves it in time. The distinction between stone and water becomes less clear. We feel less separate; more part of it all. More attuned to context, because we experience ourselves as woven into the fabric of our context. Sometimes we forget ourselves—in a good way.
  • Comfort with no-thing. The more we sit and notice, the more we know and don’t know. We know our experience more intimately, but confidence in our capacity to contain it conceptually declines. Our best concepts and constructs remain useful, but we see their limits. We no longer hold them so tightly. We develop comfort with not knowing and not being able to contain or control everything.

These are some of the fruits I feel Zen meditation practice, and Zen practice more broadly, offers over time. They seem very related to and supportive of the qualities in which Langer sees such value, including genuine curiosity and the capacity to get out of our own frame to consider others’ experience. Ultimately, she’s all about creativity: our capacity to respond freely and appropriately to life in the moment; to be creatures that co-create creation. I think Zen’s all about that, too.

Zen and the Other Mindfulness

Jeff

I gave this talk on March 6, 2025. A recording follows the text.

There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
– Dōgen

I recently listened to a long podcast interview of Ellen Langer, a pioneering and iconoclastic social psychologist who I admire immensely. I’ve never met her, but her work has quietly influenced my own—and my view of human folly and potential more broadly—for the past 30 years. She has been studying awareness, attention, and their implications for personal and social wellbeing for nearly half a century. 

Langer initially was interested in what she called mindlessness. Her work on mindlessness quickly piqued her interest in its opposite, which she called mindfulness. Langer’s use of the term mindfulness has led to some confusion between her ideas, on the one hand, and practices and ideas initially associated with Theravada Buddhism in the West, on the other hand. Today, Buddhism writ large—all streams and practices, including Zen—tends to get reduced to the term “mindfulness” in the Western popular imagination. Buddhism and mindfulness have become nearly synonymous.

But Langer didn’t know anything about meditation or the way some people were using the word mindfulness when she began her research. She chose the term mindfulness to describe her own research interest independently decades ago, and she’s still not particularly interested in so-called mindfulness meditation. 

Let me tell you just a bit about Langer’s work and findings. I learned about her as a graduate student as I worked closely with one of her colleagues. I used to spend endless hours in the basement of Williams James Hall, where the Harvard psychology department had its library, photocopying articles and book chapters I needed for my work on conflict resolution. Can you imagine? That was the Stone Age. Who does that anymore?

One of Langer’s early experiments involved copy machines. She observed how people standing in line to use a copier reacted when one of her graduate student collaborators tried to cut the line. Sometimes she would say, “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine?” About 60% of the time the collaborator would be allowed to cut. But, sometimes, when her collaborator cut the line, she would say, “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” In these cases 93% of these poor people mindlessly let Langer’s collaborator go first, even though she had given them a contentless non-reason for cutting the line. Needless to say, everyone else was in line because they also needed to make copies.

Langer became famous after another of her early experiments. She put a group of frail men in their 80s together in a residence that had been set up in every way to resemble the world 60 years earlier. The newspapers were reprints from their youth. Antique radios and TVs played music and shows from their 20s. Before long, these men were playing basketball together. Their mental health improved markedly. Blood draws before and after the experiment showed important biomarkers improved significantly, becoming typical for a young person.

Langer has produced scores of other fascinating, pathbreaking research over the years, much of it focused on improving health and healthy longevity. I’m looking forward to reading her most recent book, The Mindful Body. As the title suggests, she doesn’t accept the notion of mind-body dualism.

So in this interview I mentioned, Langer said something that has led to this talk. Asked whether her work on mindfulness was connected to mediation, Langer said no, then added, “mindfulness is what happens after meditation.” She’s implying that mediation can be mindless, or just unrelated to mindfulness by her definition. She’s more interested in the experience of those of us who meditate when we’re not meditating. Meditation is valuable from her perspective only if it promotes mindfulness as she defines it. And, even when it does, she’s saying it isn’t the only way to become mindful off the cushion. While I do think different forms of meditation can produce benefits other than those Langer cares about most, I agree with her as far as she goes.

But Langer’s conception of mindfulness is mainly contrasted with Vipassana meditation—its techniques, goals, and effects. Vipassana meditation is quite technique heavy and goal oriented. Langer is focused on developing our capacity to notice new things, to be present, and to be sensitive to context and perspective. In Vipassana, the goals are to develop insight into the three marks of existence (impermanence, no-self, and unsatisfactoriness), and eventually to attain nirvana: the end of suffering by exiting the cycle of birth and death. It offers a structured and staged approach to meditation in pursuit of these goals.

Zen’s shikantaza approach to meditation is very different, and very resonant with Langer’s work. All the comparisons of Langer’s work to Buddhism seem to focus on Vipassana, so I asked an AI engine (Claude) if it’s ever been compared to Zen. Here’s what Claude said:

“Most comparative analyses have indeed focused on contrasting Langer’s approach with meditation-based mindfulness derived from Vipassana/Theravada traditions (particularly as adapted by Jon Kabat-Zinn).

However, there are some interesting conceptual parallels between Langer’s approach and shikantaza . . . :

1. Non-goal orientation: Both Langer’s mindfulness and shikantaza emphasize process over outcome. Langer critiques mindless pursuit of goals, while shikantaza explicitly avoids meditation as a means to an end.

2. Present-centered awareness: Both approaches value immediate experience rather than abstract analysis. Langer emphasizes noticing novelty in the present moment, which aligns with shikantaza’s open, non-discriminating awareness.

3. Rejection of rigid techniques: Langer’s approach doesn’t involve formal meditation techniques, and shikantaza is considered the most technique-free form of meditation.

4. Creative engagement: Langer emphasizes creative engagement with one’s environment, which has some resonance with Zen’s emphasis on spontaneous, unfiltered interaction with reality.”

There’s so much more I’d like to say about this, and about what I think is going on when we sit shikantaza, but we’re out of time. Let me end with Langer’s definition of enlightenment, which she was asked about at the end of the interview. She seemed a bit taken off guard because it’s not really her thing, but she was happy to respond anyway. (Langer is a very happy person.) I loved her answer. She said enlightenment is being curious about the reasons someone else is doing what they’re doing. That it’s a shift in disposition so that everything and everyone isn’t judged solely from our present, myopic perspective. She traces all our problems, personally and collectively, to that mode of perception and judgment.

Amen.

The Ten Grave Precepts and the Ten Commandments

Jeff

A Cursory Side-by-Side Comparison

This is a talk I gave at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on February 19, 2025. A recording follows the text, which includes some elaboration on a few of the closing points not included in the recording.

We’re midway through the progression of our Precepts Study Group, in which many of you are participating. We’re currently discussing non-speaking of others’ faults and errors, the sixth of the ten so-called Grave Precepts.

The fact that we have exactly ten grave precepts got me thinking last week about the Ten Commandments and whether there are parallels among them and our Zen Boddhisattva Precepts. Having now examined the commandments and the grave precepts side-by-side, I think the fact that there are ten of each is a coincidence. But what are the similarities and differences between these sets of moral principles that developed independently within two—eventually, three—distinct religious traditions, Judaism (and, later, Christianity), on the one hand, and Zen Buddhism, on the other hand?

There are similarities. Each of the first four precepts—non-killing, non-stealing, non-misusing sex, and non-lying—has an analogue. Five of the ten commandments prohibit killing, stealing, coveting others’ possessions, coveting another’s partner and committing adultery, and bearing false witness. These similarities seem rather predictable. Across cultures and throughout history, to promote social stability, ethical and legal systems have provided slowly evolving norms about killing, stealing, lying, and sex among group members that tell them when these actions are and are not appropriate.

But there also are at least two stark differences between the precepts and the commandments.

The first difference is that we have several precepts that have no analogues among the ten commandments—yet the inverse arguably is not true. Each of the commandments arguably is contemplated by one of our precepts, but not the other way around.

We have a precept for non-misuse of intoxicants; for keeping a clear mind. We have precepts for non-talking about others’ errors and faults and for non-elevating oneself and blaming others. At least on the surface, it’s hard to see commandments that correspond to these precepts.

We also have a precept for non-being angry. We can see anger as an emotion that often fuels behavior prohibited by one of the commandments, like killing, but we have a separate precept about non-killing plus a separate precept about non-being angry. We also have a precept for non-being stingy. That may sound vaguely related to not coveting and not stealing, but I think it’s different. We’re encouraged not only to refrain from wanting and taking what is not ours, but to freely share what we have; to be generous.

The second stark difference between the Ten Commandments and the Ten Grave Precepts is that there are at least three, and maybe four, commandments that seem to be about respect for a god figure who seems rather self-focused, authoritarian, jealous, and obsessed with displays of loyalty. These are the commandments to recognize the lord as thy God, to have no other gods before thy God, and not to make idols of God or take God’s name in vain. Perhaps we can add the commandment to honor the sabbath to this subset. The sabbath is a day of rest but also the day when Jews and Christians gather to worship God.

If we were to make a connection between these commandments and one of our precepts, the leading candidate would be non-abusing the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha). That seems like a fair comparison, but the spirit of our precept and the emphasis of these commandments seems very different.

There are three or four (!) commandments focused on submitting to and honoring a god figure who is somehow above it all. In contrast, we have one precept about not disrespecting the Three Treasures. (Notice we’re not told to exclusively elevate them.) And, as you know, we think of each of the Three Treasures both literally and metaphorically. Buddha is both the founder of our tradition, who is not regarded as a god, and our own innate, awakened, realized nature. Dharma refers to the Buddhist teachings and to all distinct beings and things in the universe as such. Sangha is the community of Buddhist practitioners and the unity, the ultimate oneness, the interconnectedness of all beings and things.

The metaphorical perspective on the Three Treasures also points to another major difference between the Judaic and Christian commandments and our precepts. The former are expressed as literal commands: “thou shall not” or “thou shall” do something. Our precepts are expressed rather curiously in terms of non-doing or non-being something.

As you know, while a literal construction of our precepts is one perspective we take on their meaning, we also consider them from two other perspectives, which we sometimes call the relational perspective and the intrinsic perspective. Whereas the commandments are expressed in literal terms—thou shall not kill—our precepts are expressed in the language of the relative or intrinsic perspective. Dōgen’s statement of this precept is at once relational and intrinsic: “Recognizing that I am not separate from all that is, I vow to take up the Way of Not Killing.” The older formulation attributed to Bodhidharma seems to double-down on the intrinsic perspective: “Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the everlasting dharma, not giving rise to concepts of killing is called the Precept of Not Killing.”

I’ve just made a rather cursory comparison between the Ten Grave Precepts and the Ten Commandments. I know there are Jewish and Christian thinkers throughout the ages who offer less literal, more richly nuanced interpretations of the commandments. (I also should hasten to add that many of the older and much more numerous Theravada Buddhist precepts that partially inspired our Zen precepts also are rather literal prescriptions and proscriptions.) Even so, the differences between the primary expressions of the commandments and of our Zen precepts are striking and significant. Comfort with metaphor, mystery, nuance, and complex, synthetic thought and experience is part of the Zen vibe. It’s there from the start, both on the surface and at the core of our tradition.

Our tradition has a distinctive quality. Zen has a very different psychological, cultural, and spiritual developmental orientation than the mainstream elements of other religious traditions. Maybe we can think of this a bit like swimming pools, which can be shallow or deep or have a shallow end and a deep end. Zen has one depth: deep. Paradoxically, deep envelops, sustains, and partially expresses itself as shallow. We can think of the literal perspective—just don’t kill, for example—that way in the realm of the precepts.

This is evident in the fact that other traditions generally are better at connecting with young children and providing a context in which their development is supported. Many of Zen’s forms, practices, and ideas put relatively more emphasis on the relational and intrinsic perspectives. Seeing from all of these perspectives requires a developmental vantage point young kids (and even some adults) don’t yet occupy. There’s no problem with that, however, because kids are expressing all three perspectives perfectly all the time. And we can respond to them from all three perspectives with our more developed capacity to conceptualize and reflect on this without needing to conceptualize it. In fact, Zen practice ultimately is about un-forgetting and then forgetting again; awakening to oneness and then letting our awareness of it sink back into our bones. Conceptual realization is an important waypoint on the path for some of us, but real realization is about unselfconscious actualization. Simply expressing it. Presence. But elaborating on Zen through the lens of developmental psychology will need to be a topic for a future talk.

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.

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.

Nothing Twice

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on July 17, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is a translation of “Nothing Twice” by the late Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

Our group meets most days. Follows the same routine. Bows. Bells. Chants we chant again and again. Sitting still in the same posture as before. Rehearsing familiar forms. Talks and dialogue on familiar themes.

All this seeming sameness is a call to awaken to the reality of nothing twice.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus tells us no one can step in the same river twice, because it’s not the same river and we’re not the same person. We can take his thought further: no one can step in the same river once.

What is “this river”? What is “once”? Useful constructions, but constructions, nonetheless. All impermanent. Nothing ultimately graspable.

Dōgen equated ungraspable activity with Buddha nature, with emptiness, with realization.

From not one perspective, the perspective of our everyday perspective, ceaseless, ungraspable activity. From not another perspective, absolute stillness. 

Just this not one, not two perspective.

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

Enlightenment is Nothing Personal

Jeff

I gave this talk on May 1, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit. A recording follows.

This is part of the Zen teacher Reb Anderson’s guidance to us on shikantaza, which is included in our Sutra Book:

Zazen does not prefer success over failure, or enlightenment over delusion. If we are enlightened, we sit still in the middle of enlightenment, with no preference for it. If we are deluded, we sit still in the middle of delusion, with no aversion to it. This is the Buddha’s zazen.

Zazen practice is selfless. The goal of zazen is the liberation of all living beings from suffering, but the goal is exactly the same as the practice. In realizing this goal, one becomes free of self-concern and person al gain; and becoming free of self-concern and personal gain actualizes the goal. Nevertheless, zazen’s an initiatory awareness: it opens the door to a full understanding of how self and other dependently co-produce each other. This is the samadhi of all Buddhas.

The meaning of zazen, the enlightenment and liberation of all living beings, is not brought forth by the power of personal effort, and is not brought forth by the power of some other. Zazen doesn’t start when we start making effort, doesn’t stop when we stop.

We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us.

Enlightenment is nothing personal. Many of us come to spiritual practice seeking to attain something personally, but sincere practice will simply help us come to see what’s present everywhere and always.

Yes, this increased clarity of perception may well feel preferable to the experience that preceded it—much like when we’re sitting in the optometrist’s chair and she flips to the lenses that give us 20/20 vision. I’m having a personal experience, but 20/20 vision isn’t especially for me, any more than sunlight or fresh air is especially for me. The signals riding the airwaves to which I tune in when I switch on my radio aren’t especially for me. I’m just tuning into them now. Others also are tuning in, enjoying the music.

If and as I deeply realize that the enlightenment of Buddha, of the universe, of all beings, is nothing personal, then in a certain sense, I realize my life also is nothing personal. My life is the universe’s life, the Buddha’s life. My life is life in and as the universe, in and as Buddha.

From the un-attuned perspective Buddhism calls delusion—which also and equally is a feature of the universe’s enlightenment, the Buddha’s enlightenment—what I’m saying may sound rather scary. The so-called deluded perspective very much wants enlightenment to be something personal; something extra special it can attain, contain, and cling to, even as it professes a desire to release itself into it. What we realize through practice is that each of us is an ordinary sort of special—and equally so. As we realize this, experientially, in our bones, not as an idea, personal experience is transformed into something at once intimately personal and nothing personal.

As I was about to begin preparing this talk I walked into our kitchen, in bare feet, to get something from a cabinet. I stepped into a patch of salt left on the floor, and it felt rather gross. Someone had filled a saltshaker or measured salt for a recipe on the counter beneath this cabinet and spilled some on the floor.

My first impulse was to ask whoever made the mess to clean it up. But I paused and thought, well, perhaps that someone was me and I didn’t notice or had forgotten. And even if it wasn’t me, it was me, because I’m part of it all. It’s nothing personal, I thought, then swept up the salt.

This felt like right conduct for me in the moment. I’m often advocating personal responsibility and accountability in our family, perhaps moralizing a bit too much about that at times. Personal responsibility and accountability are important, but for me the universe’s teaching in the moment was to approach the salt on the floor from a different perspective. Nothing personal.

Fran said something to me about koan practice at sesshin that has stuck with me, and which applies to every element of our practice, I think. She said koan work reduces the distance between subject and object. Notice she didn’t say it eliminates the distance between subject and object. Nonduality encompasses duality. They mysteriously co-create each other; are one and the same. Not one, not two.

We exist in subject-hyphen-object relationship. Subject and object without a hyphen implies existential separation. The opposite of separation is fusion, I suppose, and it would imply the complete merger and disappearance of subject and object. We and all else exist as subject-hyphen-object.

Better yet, we exist as connected subjects. The shift in perception we’re talking about, the attunement to the universe’s enlightenment, is mature, abiding awareness of our existence as a connected subject in an enlivened realm full of subjects.

My life is distinct, but not separate. We’re all jewels in Indra’s Net. Enlightenment is a property inherent in the net, not one some of its elements have and others don’t. Some elements may be relatively more awake, or tuned in, to their enlightened nature; others, less so.

But, truly, enlightenment is nothing personal.