​[from a talk given by Sensei Genyo, 10/3/17]

Today I’d like to work with Case 35 from the Book of Serenity. It begins like this:  
        
Attention! Rakuho went to visit Kassan. Without bowing, he stood and faced him.  Kassan remarked, “A chicken lives in a phoenix nest. He’s not in the same class. Get out.”   (Thus Rakuho comes to see Kassan but acts rudely by not bowing, and Kassan rebuffs him on this.) 
 
Rakuho said, “Your fame has made me come from afar.  I beg your indulgence.”  Kassan replied, “There’s no one before me, and no old monk here.”  (Kassan again challenges Rakuho, probing his depth with this statement.) 
 
At that, Rakuho gave a shout.  Kassan said, “Stop! Stop! You shouldn’t rattle on like that.  The moon and the clouds are the same.  Valleys and mountains are differerent.  It’s not that you can’t cut off tongue tips of everyone under heaven, but how can you make a tongueless person able to talk?”  Rakuho had no reply.  Kassan struck him. Henceforth, Rakuho acquiesced.
 
In this koan, we have one of those classic dharma battles between an upstart student and a master. Rakuho had studied with Rinzai and therefore was fond of shouting. Rinzai had approved of him. However, Kassan was more of a Soto style teacher, and this is the story of how Rakuho came to accept Kassan as his teacher.
 
There is a lot in this case, but there are two things in particular I want to speak to:
The first is this statement by Kassan:  “It’s not that you can’t cut off the tongue tips of everyone under heaven, but how can you make a tongueless man able to talk.” When we think of meditation and Zen we often think the aim is to quiet the mind, the cutting off of thought.  Manjushri’s sword.  The shouts and blows. Going into silence.  Emptiness. Of course, alll this can have much benefit.  But it is also not the whole dharma.  When we only want to silence, it is too easy to think we know.  We silence others.  We cut them off.  We cut ourselves off.  We hurl insults at ourselves and each other, and cause each other pain.  But how do we give life?  How do we support the silenced to speak? 
 
We cannot become whole only by silencing and cutting off our pain in zazen (or in shouting, or in distraction). That pain actually gives life if we live through it.
 
The second thing, and not unrelated, is the moment of acquiescence.  Often we hear of the journey of taming the mind, taming the bull of the self. We can link this endeavor to the silencing process, however this koan suggests that silencing can itself be a form of self.  Rakuho was a powerful practitioner:  He could cut off speech, but in that his ego was still alive. It was only by being challenged to give voice (and support others to give voice) to the voiceless, that he realizes he doesn’t know.  He acquiesces and accepts his teacher.  This kind of acquiescing is the taming we are looking for, the taming of self-absorbedness.  Letting the voice of the tongueless speak.
 
In my own experience, over and over, the way teaches me, “Don’t rattle on like that,” and don’t be stuck in my own self-absorption. I see that my desire to somehow succeed, to be approved of, actually creates my disappointments. When I acquiesce to what is arising, I have the chance to harmonize with the situation, meet the situation. This is not-knowing and bearing witness, rather than thinking I know.  In practicing this, in acquiescing over and over, we become clearer, more flexible, and thus more resilient.
 

(From a talk given by Roshi Eve on July 11, 2017)
 
 
I’d like to talk about what studying with a teacher means, and this koan points to that very precisely. As some of you know, it’s the question put to Monk Myo as he chased Huineng after Huineng received dharma transmission from the Chan master they both studied with. The Monk Myo had been a general, ambitious and determined; Huineng was a woodcutter, illiterate and new to Chan, yet it was he who received dharma transmission. Myo chased after him, determined to get the transmission for himself, but at some point met with great doubt. Apologizing to Huineng, he asked him for a teaching, and Huineng asked aloud: Without thinking good or evil, in this very moment, show me your original face. Sometimes it’s referred to as your original face before your parents were born.
 
Studying with a teacher doesn’t mean hanging out or getting low-priced counseling. Whether you do formal koan study or you wish to work with the situations of your life, the point is the same. In fact, one translation of Genjo Koan, which refers to the koan of your life, is actualizing the fundamental point, which points directly to studying with a teacher.
 
What is actualizing? What is the fundamental point?
 
In life there is ground and figure. Ordinarily we’re completely taken up by the figure of our life, the people, the action, the give-and-take. The ground in which the figures get drawn and in which they act is often ignored. Some scientists theorize that since human beings are primed for survival, our brains are always on the lookout for people or actions that could threaten us and less inclined to pay attention to the ground, the big picture.
 
When people first start to study with a teacher, they talk about what brought them to practice, which is essentially the events of their life: the drama, the ins and outs, the figure. After sitting a while they slowly begin to experience life as it is, not the story of their story as seen through projections and scripts, as dealing with the satisfaction of wants and needs (or lack thereof). That’s when they begin to experience the ground of things, which feels softer and more primal than the figure.
 
We get born, we die. We are conditioned by cause and effect, by parents, society, and culture, by the needs of the body, by its aging and passing. But the Buddha said, I set my eyes on the deathless. There is something that doesn’t die and isn’t subject to yes or no. That’s what I mean by ground. It’s not mystical; it’s right now, that sense of life that doesn’t get warped because you feel good or bad or because life is going or not going your way. None of those matter. You see life as it is, for its own sake, not as a function of whether it fulfills your wishes or not.
 
I’m not talking about resignation. 
 
When we forgive life for not being what we thought, expected, wished, or longed for it to be, we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also. I wear my Three-Tenet Mala for a very specific purpose now, and that is to remind myself not to indulge in self-judgment, but rather to dwell in not-knowing as much as possible. No self-judgment is also no judgment of life. No condemnation of my self results in no condemnation of life. Our usual handle on life is to condemn it, to find fault. Bearing witness is to have no such handle, to just bear witness.
 
I’m no different from other people, I want fulfillment of my needs and wishes and I take action for that purpose. But that’s different from wanting to control things, and from feeling like a victim when I can’t. Always I ask: What is my prison? The prison is the handle I’m using all the time.
 
Private study has to do with opening up a space in which the mind is not building its prison, of helping the student to see not a way out, but that there was never a prison to begin with. Private study does not require answers or solutions, but rather cultivating a space that helps you let go of that prison. In that space, you will notice joy and aliveness and a sense of having a link to eternity. This is the neighborhood of awakening. Then the space will close up, perhaps leaving a sense of loss. But it will open up again. You can just notice these things without grabbing them. Over time you will find yourself living more and more in this space.


Show me your original face before your parents were born. Regardless of the situation you bring to a teacher, the teacher will always find some way to throw this question back to you: What’s your original face beyond the kids, beyond the sick husband, beyond the demands of the job, beyond the needs of your parents? What is that original face? Where is it? What does it feel like, taste like, smell like?
 
Don’t get impatient and harsh with yourself. Our concepts and frameworks of thinking can often stand in our way, but that’s human. With great compassion, without condemning yourself, go on.
 
There is nothing linear about this. You will still experience painful states of mind and you’ll think this practice isn’t working except for providing you with some refuge of stillness and rest. But with the help of teachers and sangha, and even without changing the content of the life, you can transform oppression into freedom. The question is, how much do the bars of our lives open, so that we can experience our lives not as doomed or fated by circumstance, but lived freely and peacefully?

[from a talk given by Sensei Genyo January 24, 2017 during sesshin]

​In Buddhism there is a wide variety of methods related to meditation and spiritual practice, and of course there are many more in other spiritual traditions.  In Zen, we also have a number of methods such as “turning the light around”, following the breath, locating the attention in the hara, focusing intensely on a koan, and so forth.  However, in its essence Zen practice is radically simple: in meditation we just sit, and in life we just live, attending to each moment directly as it arises.  We might affirm that this essential reality is present in all approaches to meditation and life; even if it is not named.
 
What does this mean?  How do we practice just sitting, just living?  Aren’t we always just living?  Roshi Bernie once gave a talk in Germany, and at the end asked if people had questions. Someone raised his hand and said, “Roshi, how can I be here now?” clearly referring to the phrase made famous by Ram Dass.  At that point Bernie looked at the audience and said, “Whoever’s not here now, please stand up.”  No one stood up, and that was the end of that.  We are always here now,  yet . . .  we often feel like we’re not. It’s a paradox. We’re not just sitting, we’re thinking about stuff that happened in the past, or might happen in the future.  So we’re not just sitting; we’re sitting and thinking, sitting and worrying. 
 
So our practice of just sitting means we let go of our addiction to thought, and we just sit.  Whatever arises just arises  Of course thoughts arise. So we let them arise and gently let them go, refocusing on the simplicity of our sitting, just breathing and being aware.
 
We might say that Zen practice is the practice of suchness.  Yunyan proclaimed to his student Dongshan, a founder of the Soto lineage:  “Just this is it!”  Pondering his teachers statement led Dongshan to his own enlightenment, which he described as merging with suchness. 
 
Tibetan Buddhism has a huge variety of meditation methods— but at their heart is something very much along this line. I read an explanation of a core Tibetan meditation which is called the samadhi of suchness:  Here are the instructions: “Start out by relaxing your mind from within; don’t follow after any deluded thought. Mind itself is empty yet aware — a bare reality beyond anything you can think or say.  Settle for a moment in this simplicity . . . This is the absorption (samadhi) of suchness.”  This is also known as the practice of emptiness — we could say “not-knowing.”   The Tibetans go on to name a second absorption, which the samadhi of total illumination, which is simply the natural radiance of the suchness practice, manifesting as compassion towards all beings. 
 
In this way, in just sitting, in letting go of following after our thoughts, and settling into just sitting, the natural radiant heart of our being arises.
 
Thus we begin in paradox. We feel like we’re not here, when we already are here.  Then, like big goose dummies (to borrow a colorful image from Chaung Tzu) we practice being right where we are. In doing so, our natural energy and compassion unfurls itself.  We benefit as our inner energies are freed up from their habitual, obsessive patterns, and we experience the development of our inner chi, the jori-ki as they say in Japanese Zen.  We also benefit others as compassion arises, and loving actions manifest naturally. 
 
In meditating daily, we are practicing being right where we are, aware and present, and we develop our joriki, our natural inner energy.  We can also complement our sitting with the Three Tenets as a way to focus the natural unfolding of our practice via Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action.
In this way we can expand the circle of our practice into all the arenas of our lives.

[From a talk given by Roshi Eve on March 25]

      A monk asked Yun Men, “How is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?”
     Yun Men said, “Body exposed in the golden wind.”

This is one of my favorite koans. It gets better with age, meaning with my age, for I uncover new teachings in it each time I study it anew.

Why are we here, practicing in the zendo? Why and what do we practice at home? We all have different motivations, but there’s a basic one for me, and that is wishing to experience the oneness of this world and of all life, and then deepen the practice. There is nothing abstract about this, I have learned that the more things I experience as me, the less harm I will do in the world.

I am trying to describe something that is beyond the reaches of my brain and the karmic laws it follows. I beat the drum of the deathless, the Buddha said in one of his discourses. He sets his eyes on the deathless, not the things that depend on life conditions and will therefore pass as those conditions pass, but that which isn’t born and doesn’t die.

How do you experience this? By letting go. And this koan asks, what happens after you do that? What happens after years of practice, when we see our attachments finally falling away like leaves, when all the concepts that made up my consciousness of who I am finally fall bare, the powerful needs and cravings finally released—what happens then?

I’ll tell you what doesn’t happen: quiescence and lack of response. Look outside, see the bare trees still tremble in this late, cold winter. They will feel the caress of a warm breeze when that happens, and now they shiver when it’s cold. Either way, there is complete exposure to everything in the universe, and a response. Full exposure doesn’t mean no response, it means no reactivity. In fact, you can’t help but respond. I’m hot, I sweat. I’m cold, I shiver. I’m old, I get stiff, or my memory deteriorates. What’s the use of self-consciousness then? What’s the use of complaint? What old version are you comparing yourself to?

Full exposure doesn’t mean apathy. It doesn’t imply quiescence or passivity.
For sure, there are those early mornings when I seek shelter from the storm in my practice. That’s okay for a short while, especially when I feel overwhelmed, but in my gut I know that that’s not the point. This practice does not conflict with activity, it is at the very essence of activity.

I beat the drum of the deathless. Tan, our wonderful monastic friend, was here last week and I drove him home. We talked about our different ways of life. Both of us, I believe, seek the undying and unborn in the middle of the dying and the born. Whether you are a monastic or a layperson, this is hard to do. In some ways, his is a much more exposed life than mine because he follows the rules of the Vinaya. They mandate that he must wear certain robes even in the harshest of weather, with no added layers for protection. He has to beg for food every single day in order to eat, completely relying on the bounty and generosity of the world rather than on his own efforts. He carries no money. He is much more exposed to the elements and to the rawness of life than I am.

You and I don’t follow those rules. We change clothes, depending on the weather and the occasion. When we’re hungry we reach into the refrigerator or else we go into a restaurant and pat our pocket where the money lies. We are not exposed like him. But we may be more buffeted by winds of change, by family, friends and work connections. We may find ourselves in many more unfamiliar neighborhoods than him.

In these times I think especially of the work involved with helping illegal immigrants and refugees, with fighting against climate change, at a time when so many hard-won, forward steps are being undermined and even dismantled. But I keep in mind Thomas Merton’s caution:  . . . [N]on-violence seeks dialogue, not victory . . . [T]rue non-violence requires spiritual discipline and a deep love for people.

When one works, fully exposed, we seek dialogue with everything, not victory. We seek relationship at every moment with every thing that arises, including every thing inside ourselves. Merton says: The enemy is not the other but the tendency in all of us to make the other different and to declare ourselves the norm and the center of human behavior.

That tendency is gone when the leaves fall, and then, what’s left? Continuing work, not out of denial or violence, but out of relationship with everything.

A friend who went to Standing Rock last winter wrote: I’ve identified a new goal/mantra: Instead of starting a path or endeavor with the goal of achieving perfection, change, resolution, or any kind of end goal at all, I commit to simply showing up, bearing witness, and participating in the world.
​
Exposure comes with practice. There’s no talk of winning, because winning comes with losing. There’s no need for honors or riches, for recognition or success. We bend with the wind, we feel the woodpeckers creating holes in our bark, we shiver with the storm. No conflict anywhere, just the deathless in very moment.
 

from a talk given by John Genyo Sprague on Oct. 4, 2016
 
     Vast is the robe of liberation / a formless field of benefaction.
 
What is liberation anyway? Each of us might answer differently, and all these answers could be valid.  But for my purposes here I will describe liberation as freedom from the patterns of our minds, freedom from our conditioned existence. 
 
Yet here we are in the midst of our conditioned existence, and our own mind. There are so many limitations, so many troublesome conditions:  health and other physical limitations; conditioned mental states; family attachments and conflicts; the economic and class context we find ourselves in; our dependency on our society’s cultural frameworks. We live in limitation all the time. Perhaps the biggest and closest experience we have of limitation is our self, our ego and the feelings of how limited and boxed in we actually are.
 
How then can we relate to dharma affirmations like the verse which evokes the robe of liberation? And what about all the stories of practitioners who realize a state of liberation?  Perhaps all that liberation talk only really makes sense for monastics whose lives have been set-up to focus solely on the dharma.  But what can liberation really mean for lay people like us, who are practicing right in the middle of a complex web of limitations, attachments and worldly conditions? 
 
Let’s consider Dogen’s famous advice to his lay student?  “To study the Dharma is to study the self” — in other words, study the limitations. But we don’t want to stay there, going to therapy our entire lives!  “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.”   Thus, in applying this teaching to our own lives, we might consider that liberation arises when we have forgotten the self, when we are simply engaged with what is manifesting in the flow of our lives — our daily chores, connecting with our partners, dealing with dying parents.  Then, every experience, even the most challenging situation or conflict, teaches us, shows us the dharma, enlightens us.
 
There is passage in a Tibetan prayer I recite sometimes:   “May I clearly perceive all experiences to be as insubstantial as the dream fabric of the night, and instantly awaken to perceive the pure wisdom display in the arising of every phenomenon.”  The linguistic style is very different, but the meaning here dovetails well with Dogen’s teaching.  All experiences and phenomena are transitory, like moments in a dance . . .  yet as we awaken, we experience how each phenomenon enlightens us, how it displays wisdom, and teaches us the dharma.
 
Thus our liberation must be in the midst of daily life; it has to be, even in the midst of our experience of self. Dogen says we forget the self. Yes, this happens, and it is wonderful to let go and forget ourselves.  And then we are confronted with the experience of self again, and again, confronted with limitation again and again.  In fact we are responsible for ourselves. Who else can be?  We see how we treat others. We notice how we are functioning in our work. Yes, we want to learn from our experiences, and become more clear and compassionate. But we can only do that right where we are, in the conditions we are in.  The study goes on.  We have both self, and no self.  Limitation and liberation.
 
 

[from a talk given by Sally Sonen Kealy for Sesshin, August 2016]

​Return yourself to yourself
Discover the meaning that is already seeded within you
~Gavin Harrison~
 
Good Evening everyone.  At the end of this day of meditation you may be experiencing a sense of what it is to “return yourself to yourself.”  Whatever preoccupations you came through the door with may be fading, and moment-by-moment awareness may be emerging as foreground.  There are several references in Zen that express these aspects of self as Guest and Host.  So, for a moment imagine having a guest in your home that moves in and refuses to leave.  This is symbolic of all our attachments.  They are tenacious and stubborn, however, when we return to the Host, then all of our guests are no problem and we can serve them.  This reminds me of the spirit of the Gate of Sweet Nectar.   In this chant, all beings are invited to a Meal with NO exception, and the Host is free and available to serve them, be with them, hang out, laugh, cry, feed, embrace or do whatever is needed.  Actually, the Host and Guests become One.  In returning “yourself to yourself”, one stops losing oneself to fixed ideas and opinions, and one can, as the Bible says, “be in the world but not of it.” 
    
Case 30 of the Mumonkan, “Mind is Buddha” points to this:  Taibai once asked Baso, “What is Buddha?”  Baso answered “Mind is Buddha.”
I like to use the word Mind for Self.  If you get a mental image of a historical Buddha, then you are robbing yourself of the wonderful opportunity to see your life as Buddha’s life; to see Buddha’s life as YOUR life.  Dogen Zenji speaks of zazen as the magnificent Buddha Mudra.  Again, if you hear this, and mentally see the historical Buddha, you are missing your life!  As you sit on your cushion or chair now, please mentally say your name and add “Mudra”.  YOU are the Buddha Mudra having been given this body; this life.
 
One Zen Master wrote a poem as his answer to “Mind is Buddha”.  I love the first two lines:
        In winter I long for warmth
        In rain I look for a fine day.
 
Mind is the warmth of a blanket, and evening walks or being able to complete one’s work outdoors under a clear sky.  It is walking with your family to another country for food and shelter.  There is no complaint in these two lines about the cold or the rain.  So your life and my life are this Mind, and the Mind of compassion may arise spontaneously from this kind of intimacy with longing.  One can understand the hardship and confusion of others as so many of us feel in today’s world conflict.  Dogen says that once you have found your Treasure House (Mind), then you will know how to use it. 
 
Please savor, relish and use the rest of this retreat; the rest of your life!  Discover that which is already seeded within you.  The plowing and planting is already done.  Savor this life.  Joseph Campbell spoke of  ”following your bliss.” I used to feel a pressure to find my personal bliss, but Zen practice has shown me that walking, breathing, chopping vegetables with a friend, feeling the air on my skin, picking up a piece of discarded trash, and countless actions are all expressions of the bliss of my life as Sally Sonen.  Yes, I miss it over and over again, but it is unceasingly present and available to me as it is to you. 
 
It just takes heart to return the self to the self.  It is said that in the Kentucky Derby, the winning horse effectively runs out of oxygen after the first half mile, and do you know what he goes the rest of the way on to win the race?
​
Heart!  Your heart, your life!  This very life just as it is.  What a gift to be here, together.  Thank you.
 

[From a talk by Sensei John Genyo Sprague on March 18, 2016]
 
Guarding the One is a term which originated with Taoist masters in ancient China.  The One referred to the universal energy (chi) from which all forms arise— Tao, the Great Way as it manifests in the energy of Chi.  Guarding the one was a meditative approach, involving deep concentration, and building inner energy, cultivating and keeping the chi within the body.
 
When Buddhist masters came to China, they were exposed to the native Taoist traditions, and the result was a new style of Buddhism known as Chan (later Zen in Japan). Early Chan masters borrowed the idea of Guarding the One from Taoists and used it to mean focusing the mind single-pointedly, stabilizing and calming the mind.  Tao-hsin and Hung-Jen (the 4th &5th patriarchs) used the phrase “guarding the one without moving.”  This is a one-pointed meditative technique.  As we sit, I offer you this theme, and urge you to use this opportunity to really practice your focus and concentration.  You can focus on the breath, on the hara in the lower belly, on a koan.  If you practice shikantaza your focus can be more expansive, but this requires even greater depth of concentration. 
 
The early Taoist version of this practice meant much the same, except that they emphasized more the building and preserving of energy.  The One was not just a focus in meditative practice, but the One itself, ‘the primordial vital energy underlying all . . . the pure power of life.”  (Livia Kohn, “The Taoist Experience” p. 192)   Guarding the One was seen as a foundation of health and long-life.  In Zen we don’t traditionally talk much about energy.  However it is there.  When we practice focused meditation, our inner energy builds.  When we come out of retreat, we typically feel a sense of stable, nourishing energy, which is called joriki in Japanese Zen. This is the chi.   In fact in our lineage Maezumi Roshi had a period during his career when he explored the Taoist roots of the teachings, and particularly the teachings on chi, and how we can build and channel it throughout our body.  We are blessed to have this day to practice in this way.  Take this time to develop your concentration and nourish yourselves inwardly.
 
At the same time in considering your life beyond sitting meditation, there are also methods for how this approach can be practiced throughout one’s days by being present and focused in whatever you are doing and saying, such that the distinction between doing, saying, and thinking disappear, and an increased experience of harmony and oneness manifests. In this way we can stay centered, and “guard the one” in whatever we are doing.
 
 
To summarize, “guarding the one” gives stability to the mind, but also supports health and longevity.  The idea is through quiet inner concentration, we nourish and build inner energy, keeping it in the body, maintaining the integrity of ones being.  Today our one-day retreat is a perfect opportunity to work with this idea of guarding the one— practicing meditative focus, and nourishing our inner energies.  In doing so, we can also recognize ways we can bring this concentrative presence into our lives outside of retreat.
 
Along that line, before we go back into our sitting meditation, I want to share some further thoughts that have been with me recently as I have contemplated the notion of guarding the one.  I see this as having profound implications, not just for oneself but for the world.  Yes, we find the One within ourselves, and we concentrate inwardly in our meditation.  At the same time, the One is present in all beings and all things.   Thus “Guarding the One” is a peacemaking mission — guarding and protecting that which unites us, that which is most important — the universality of life itself, the energy at the heart of all beings, which everyone is an expression of.  In this sense, all of our practices:  precepts, peacemaking, ritual, council, along with meditation, are forms of “guarding the one”.  Let’s dedicate this day and our ongoing practice to Guarding the One, protecting and nourishing the very heart of life, not only in ourselves, but in all beings.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[From a talk given by Eve Marko on January 13, 2015]

     Zhaozhou once asked Nanquan, ‘What is Tao?’ Nanquan answered, ‘Ordinary mind is Tao.’         ‘Then should we direct ourselves toward it or not?’ asked Zhaozhou. ‘If you try to direct                yourself toward it, you go away from it,’ answered Nanquan. Zhaozhou continued, ‘If we do          not try, how can we know that it is Tao?’ Nanquan replied, ‘Tao does not belong to knowing        or to not-knowing. Knowing is illusion; not-knowing is blankness. If you really attain to Tao of      no-doubt, it is like the great void, so vast and boundless. How then can there be right and            wrong in the Tao?’ At these words, Zhaozhou was suddenly enlightened.

It’s easy to conclude that it was Nanquan’s sterling words that brought on Zhaozhou’s breakthrough, but in doing so you’d be ignoring the years of practice that Zhaozhou did both before this famous dialogue and after. Zhaozhou stayed with Nanquan even after his major realization till Nanquan’s death, then wandered from monastery to monastery and didn’t begin to teach till he was 80, becoming one of the greatest of all Chan masters.

So what was Zhaozhou practicing all these years? You might call it the practice of paradox.

Do I direct myself towards it or not? Yes or no? This way or that way? These are all examples of an either/or type of reasoning. This kind of reasoning is useful in making everyday decisions: Should I go to the post office today or should I go tomorrow? Do I read this book or do I read that book? But that kind of reasoning is also very limited.

You are probably aware of the hypothesis of multiverses, according to which, when I wonder whether to go to the post office today or tomorrow, a universe unfolds in which I go to the post office today and simultaneously a second universe unfolds in which I go to the post office tomorrow. In other words, both eventualities co-exist, only in separate universes.

The paradigm of Indra’s Net of pearls brings both eventualities together. Here, every thought, concept, feeling, or being is a pearl. Each pearl lies in a node of the Net, thus connected to all the other pearls, and each pearl reflects all the other pearls. I can go to the post office today is one pearl. I’ll go to the post office tomorrow is another pearl. One doesn’t nullify the other; both co-exist in this infinite Net.

Here’s another situation that doesn’t lend itself to either/or thinking: I love him and I hate him at the same time. Two opposite feelings, but still two pearls existing in the same net. Temple Grandin, the autistic expert on animal science, has written that the reason she won’t marry is because she can’t love and hate at the same time. She explains that the frontal part of the brain of severely autistic people like her, which deals with integration of contrasts and opposites, is different from its counterpart in people who are not severely autistic. Those of us who are not autistic people instantly get that one can love and hate a person at the same time, while Grandin wrote that in her case, the minute her partner gets angry or upset or withdraws, she’ll be convinced that there’s no more love in the relationship. In her case, it’s either-or. In our case, it’s both-and.

Parker Palmer, the educator, has written: “Paradoxical thinking . . . comes from the capacity to entertain apparently contradictory ideas in a way that stretches the mind and opens the heart to something new. Paradox is also a way of being that’s key to wholeness, which does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” He talked about the depressions he’s coped with in his life, and then added: “Eventually I was able to see that the closer I move to the source of light, the deeper my shadow becomes. To be whole I have to be able to say I am both shadow and light.”

We often think that practicing will keep us in the light, or at least bring us closer. And we want that, don’t we? Like Zhaozhou, we want to direct towards something, light rather than dark, wholeness rather than fragmentation. And yet, “[t]he closer I move to the source of light, the deeper my shadow becomes.” That’s been my experience, too. The greater the light, the more corners it reveals that are in shadow. Do I disown those parts of me?

“Embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” Embracing brokenness for me means embracing myself as I am. The Hasidic version of the start of life is that God created a holy vessel, which then shattered into pieces, and we are all shards of that holy vessel trying to come back together again. According to the Big Bang Theory, a singularity expanded to become gases and eventually infinite particles, to which we then gave names: planet, comet, sun. In some ways they both come to the same thing: We are fragments, each shaped differently from the other. One has concave sides, another has convex. One’s corners are sharp and another’s are round. One is shy and the other likes to brag; one is socially adaptable and the other wants to hide. We call some aspects shortcomings and others virtues, not very different from how we label some people autistic and others normal. Basically, we’re like serrated rocks that are never the same. But keep in mind that we’re not just unique, each of us is whole as we are, in our respective uniqueness.

If that is the case, then is our objective to become smooth? To get rid of my brokenness, my jaggedness and unevenness, the surfaces that are fine as they are except for my judgments of them?

I am both shadow and light. In beginning the 108 Days of Practice, Genyo quoted the great Chan master Linchi: “You must right now turn your light around and shine it on yourselves, not go seeking somewhere else.  Then you will understand that in body and mind you are no different from the Ancestors and Buddhas, and that there is nothing to do.”

This is very poignant for me. We’re broken vessels and we want to be whole. Many of us come to practice because we want to go after the light. We want to do what Zhaozhou suggested, go towards something. It could be a career, a lover, a zendo or a teacher or guru. Linchi says not to go out to seek wholeness but to go in. Turn your attention inwards and rest there. Does everything get lit up? I doubt it. The deeper I go to the source of light, the more shadows I find. So is the work to go further and further into light till I get rid of all shadows, or is it to find the light in the shadows? To find that I’m both light and shadow.