By Eshin Brenda Shoshanna

One afternoon, when I was a sophomore in high school in Brooklyn, as the class was over one day, my history teacher slid over to me. Then he secretly handed me something wrapped in a brown paper bag.

“This is just for you,” he murmured under his breath. “Don’t tell anybody I gave it to you. Take it home. I know you’ll love it.”

Scared, I took the hidden package and ran with it right home. Once safely inside, I went to my room and shut the door tight before carefully opening it up. Inside I found a little book, On Zen by D.T. Suzuki. This has to be a dangerous book, I thought, wondering why he felt it was just right for me. Completely unaware of what it could be about, I flipped through the pages and started to read.

The book was filled with odd little stories based on questions and answers that had taken place between Zen Masters and their students, some of them thousands of years old. The questions and answers, called mondos or koans, were inscrutable. Like life itself, they were impossible to figure out. None of it made any sense at all.  

But I was fascinated, anyway. Even though I had no idea what any of it meant, I couldn’t put the book down. Soon, waves of joy washed over me. The more I read the more I was filled with unexpected happiness. This is it! I thought, delighted. This is right, fantastic, amazing! But of course, I had no idea why I was so happy, or what the koans were all about. I also didn’t realize that it was fine not to understand. In Zen having ready-made answers was just the booby prize.  

Excited and thrilled I couldn’t let the book go. Wherever I went, I carried it with me and read it again and again. When people asked why I loved it so much, I said, “I have no idea.” And I didn’t. When they asked me what the koans meant, I said, “I don’t know.” All I did know was that in an instant something in my life had turned around. 

As the years went by I kept reading that book, but made no progress. I poured over the inscrutable questions, dwelt upon them, read commentaries, and even wrote poems about them at the beach. But I still didn’t understand.  And yet, whenever I engaged with these koans, my world opened wide. Emotional pain often dissipated, and I learned what it meant to be a friend. Out of nowhere, life made sense. What kind of sense? Don’t ask me. I don’t understand.

A few years later I got married and kept reading the book whenever I could. Often I’d ask my husband if he thought my Zen teacher would be coming to this country, or if I would have to go to Japan.

“He’s coming here, I’m positive of it,” my husband reassured me, hoping I would stop asking him the same question again and again. I’m sure he also hoped that this inscrutable teacher I was waiting for would arrive soon.

Time has its own way in Zen practice. Fourteen years later I met my teacher. Unbeknownst to us, my husband and I had moved into an apartment two blocks away from where he was every day. For two years I walked by that building day in and day out with no idea that he was inside, giving every ounce of his energy to getting things ready, preparing for us, and waiting for me.  

One day, a friend returned from sesshin in Litchfield, Connecticut. “There’s someone you must meet,” she smiled at me and immediately showed me how to do zazen.

Zazen was hard, it hurt. I squirmed as my knees stuck up and wouldn’t go down into the cross-legged position. I just did the little I could each day and couldn’t understand how even a short time of sitting in the morning and evening became so precious it turned my day around. Soon, my sittings grew longer and my knees slowly relaxed and came down.

Finally, I was ready. The zendo was in a beautiful townhouse in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. Thursday night was beginner’s night, and I lined up outside with all the other new students, waiting for the doors to open. Who knew what would happen then? Little did I realize that now I would receive the teachings in an entirely different way. They weren’t hidden in a secret book. Just the opposite.

At exactly six fifteen the doors opened and the line started to move. The doors didn’t open a minute sooner or later and remained open for forty-five minutes. At precisely seven o’clock they were closed. If you arrived a minute later the door stayed shut and you couldn’t get in. Time mattered here.

As soon as we walked into the small entrance vestibule, we were told to take off our shoes and place them onto the shoe rack, carefully. “Don’t throw your shoes on the rack helter-skelter,” we were instructed. “Pay attention. The way you treat your shoes is the way you treat everything in your life. Messy shoes, messy mind!” I gasped. Oh, it became so clear.

Then we were instructed to put whatever we were carrying with us into a small room on the side. “We don’t carry packages with us here. Empty-handed we come, empty-handed we go.” What a relief to let things go, one package at a time.

As it was our first time here, we were directed upstairs to the second floor and ushered into a long, beautiful, empty room, with flowers on the altar and cushions lined up on the floor. Then we were told to sit down and wait. Wait for what, I wondered. “Wait without waiting for anything,” Jonen, a resident, instructed.

She told us to keep our eyes down. “Don’t look around, don’t look for something.” Out of the corner of our eyes, we peeked at each other anyway. Vinny was there, Harold, Peter, Sara, and two Catholic nuns. This particular group kept returning day after day, week after week, year after year. We became inseparable, and even though many of us are gone now, we will never be apart.

The moment came to do zazen together. “Just sit still with your spine erect, pay attention to your breath, and don’t move until you hear the bell, no matter what.” My mind raced wildly, this couldn’t be it after all those years of waiting. Just this? Where was I really? Was my teacher truly downstairs, sitting like the rest of us?

Finally, the bell rang and we got up from our cushions and bowed in thanks. We were led downstairs to the main zendo, to join other students sitting there. Walking through the wooden zendo, I was transported to ancient Japan. The intense silence, simplicity, and beauty were overwhelming. Suddenly wooden clappers were struck, indicating that it was time to stop at a cushion and sit again.

Was that it, I wondered? Sit down, breathe, get up, walk, listen to the bell and clappers, and then do it all over again? Wasn’t Zen mystical, mysterious, hidden? In the silence that enveloped us all, I kept questioning, who are these people? Who am I? Why am I here? What happens next? It seemed as though nothing happened except what was natural and inevitable. How could that be? And what did my endless thoughts really want of me?

When the evening was over a powerful Japanese monk who’d been sitting at the front of the line stood up and moved to the center. I stared at him and shivered. Here he was after all these years! There was no doubt in my mind.

“Thank you for coming,” he spoke in a deep, resounding voice. “You are welcome to join us for zazen at other times now as well. After zazen tonight, there will be informal tea served upstairs. Other times after zazen there is zendo cleaning.”

Cleaning? Why did he mention cleaning, I wondered. What did it have to do with anything? I wanted to shout out, “When it’s time for cleaning, what do we do then?”

He smiled and glanced at me suddenly as if he’d heard exactly what I’d just thought. “And when it’s time for cleaning,” he continued, “it’s very simple. Just grab the dust rag and dust.”

A gong rang out and the evening was over. That was it. I was completely jarred. What did all of this have to do with the wonderful stories I’d been reading for years? I left quickly and walked back to my apartment, dazed.

My husband, waiting at home, couldn’t wait to hear the news.  “How was it?” he asked.

“It was strange, easy, difficult, beautiful, and my legs hurt terribly,” I uttered.

He was startled.  “Well, at least you tried it,” he said. “You don’t have to go back.”

“I don’t know if I will or won’t go back,” I replied.

But at four o’clock the next morning, as if electrocuted, I suddenly awoke and sat bolt upright in bed. My God, I thought, morning sitting at the zendo was at five thirty am. There was no way I could go back to sleep. I had to get out of bed immediately and get back to the zendo.

 

By Eshin Brenda Shoshanna

“Do not be confused by your confusion.”

–Soen Nakagawa Roshi

Confusion swirls around everywhere. Our words fly past one another. People talk at cross purposes. It is difficult to really listen to one another or separate truth from lies. Games replace reality. Many lose touch with their authentic selves, living instead in a world of assumptions that bring no peace or fulfillment. Much of what we believe to be set in stone vanishes.

Relationships alter and for many their sense of safety and security is destabilized. Zen teachings have always told us that we live our lives steeped in delusion, unable to tell the sour from the sweet, or separate medicine from poison. Often we depend upon friends or teachers, who we later discover are more confused than we are. Where can we turn to dependable guidance? How can we navigate these choppy waters? Where can we find a safe harbor during times of need?

What Can We Truly Depend On?

It is said that times of danger and rapid change are the best times in which to grow. Though painful, these times offer an urgent opportunity to discover our true life compass, to find something real.

Yet confusion is also dispiriting and can stop us from moving forward. The great Zen Master Soen Nakagawa Roshi, told us that to find our footing, we must move forward in the midst of chaos.

“Do not be confused by your confusion,” he said. What he meant was: do not be confused by feelings that arise and depart. Enjoy your confusion and make friends with it, but don’t take it seriously. Look at the confusion and have a good laugh. The confusion is trying to pull you into its web, but you do not have to be trapped.

There is a deeper wisdom within us that goes beyond all the conflicting phenomena that come our way. Know that confusion is simply another dream trying to knock us off our feet.

An Echo of the Wind

Where is this deeper wisdom and how do we find it? We start by not allowing passing feelings, including confusion, to hold sway over our lives. Just be aware of what is happening, and then take the next step. Kinhin is a wonderful teacher for that. We continue to take one step and then another, no matter what we think or feel. Each step is a new moment and experience. “This Moment Will Not Come Again.”

Give passing feelings no power over you. Realize that they are no more than the echo of the wind. Depending upon endlessly shifting phenomena will only make you more confused. Sit down and let your confusion arise and let it pass. Then your true direction will make itself known. “Do not be confused by your confusion” is a pointer about how to wake up from distress.

Just See Confusion as Confusion

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with confusion. Just step back and see confusion as confusion. Don’t believe what it tells you or give it power over your life. Just like thunderclouds, it will inevitably pass. Confusion is natural. When seen simply as a passing phenomenon, it’s easy to realize that confusion is not who we intrinsically are. We don’t have to stay in it forever. There is a way out.

There Is a Way Out

When we do not wake up out of the spell created by confusion, it can claim our lives and turn us into ghosts haunting valleys and trees. We are not really alive, we can’t see what is in front of us. This leads not only to danger but to loneliness and heartache.

The great Zen teacher, Dogen, returned from China after years of hard practice. He was greeted in Japan when he returned and asked what he had discovered. His answer was simple, “My eyebrows are horizontal, my nose is vertical.”

My Eyebrows Are Horizontal, My Nose Is Vertical

Such an amazing discovery. Why does it take us years and years to realize this? Dogen is telling us that he was able to see things just as they are. He added nothing to what he saw. He wasn’t better than someone else because of it, or worse. When you see things just as they are, and allow them to be that way, what happens to confusion? An important point is that we must be willing to allow things to be as they are, then it is much easier to see them.

Life Is One Continuous Mistake

Dogen also said, “Life is one continuous mistake.” We are tormented by the mistakes we think we’ve made and play them over and over again in our minds. Yet right now, right here, as we sit quietly and observe, where are the mistakes we made?

As we sit quietly and look within, even though we may be sitting next to one another, we are all sitting in our own worlds. As we breathe one breath together, our mistakes may arise again and again. But where are they, really? Only in our mind. As we practice with the mistakes, notice them, and let them go their way, each time the mistakes reappear, they will be weaker and dimmer than before. When we have absorbed them completely and received whatever nourishment and instruction they have for us, they will disappear.

Rather than try to figure out mistakes, or punish ourselves for them, in zazen we simply keep watching them. Then, not only will new insights arrive, but one day the so-called mistake will be absorbed completely.

You Cannot Make a Mistake

Making a mistake can be terrifying. We live our lives in fear that we’re not doing things correctly. Deep down we’re always saying, “What happens if I make a mistake?” In zazen you cannot make a mistake. When you sit on the cushion you can’t do anything wrong! Whatever comes, comes. Whatever goes, goes. It happens naturally, on its own. Whatever appears is perfect in the moment. Of course, when we realize this, it’s a huge relief. But wait a minute! You also can’t do anything right either. Again, it’s all happening on its own.

Who decides what is right or wrong? Take a moment to notice what would have happened in your life if that so-called mistake never took place. You wouldn’t be the person you are now. Like it or not, something would be missing.

Making the Rock Garden Perfect

A high official was coming to visit a Zen monastery. All the monks worked feverishly to make it perfect. The floors were polished, windows washed and leaves in the beautiful rock garden carefully swept away. All was in order.

The Zen Master watched all that went on. After the work was completed, he quickly climbed to the roof carrying a bag of old autumn leaves. Once on the roof, he opened the bag and let the leaves drift down over the immaculate rock garden.

“Ah,” said the Zen Master, “now it’s truly perfect.”

We fear natural changes and fight chaos and the seeming disorder that appears in our lives. Immediately, we want to clean things up, get rid of debris, organize, and impose order on things. Yet when the wind blows in our direction and tosses leaves all over our well-ordered lives, this too, is perfection. Life is happening as it must. Look at the perfection, don’t be too quick to sweep the leaves away. Live with what has flown into your life and what it shows you. And remember, soon the wind will blow the leaves another way.

Before great clarity, chaos or confusion can appear. Confusion is fundamentally our friend. Our entire need to see clearly is fueled by the confusion we feel. We actually know the truth every moment, we just don’t want to accept it. When we accept it we see that all is an intrinsic, living part of reality. No need to join the mad, whirling mind. Let reality be reality. Let yourself be who you truly are. 

By Eshin Brenda Shoshanna

Some people are unable to feel full and complete. They crave so much that no matter what they have, they cannot be satisfied. This is called being a hungry ghost, run by the affliction of greed. When hungry ghosts are invited to a banquet, they sample everything and eat it up, but cannot taste, savor, or digest the delicious meal in front of them. No matter what they eat, they are left hungrier than before.

Similarly, when hungry ghosts are invited to the banquet of life, they cannot taste or digest their experiences. Hungry ghosts can be hungry for food, love, money, recognition, anything. Whatever they receive, they want more.

Hungry ghosts do not realize that it is greed that causes the pain. And the more they grasp, the more they crush whatever they have in the palm of their hand. As we learn to let go, rather than feed our cravings, the hunger and dissatisfaction will start to subside.

The Disease of the Mind

To separate what we like
From what we dislike
Is the disease of the mind.

—Zen Master Sosan

As we feed our cravings, we become controlled by the desire to cling to whatever feels good and reject whatever feels threatening. When we find what we like, we become attached; when we find what we dislike, we use all our power to push it away. Thus, we spend our precious life energy discarding half our experience, and grasping at and clinging to the rest.
Living this way, we become completely dependent on external conditions for our sense of well-being. A sunny day will make us happy, but as soon as thunderstorms arrive our happiness is gone. The same is true in our relationships, where so-called love and hate fluctuate wildly.
Like a leaf blowing in the wind, we can’t relax, we are always anticipating what will come next. Because people and conditions constantly change, we have no idea what we can hold on to or where to find true satisfaction.

A student went to his meditation teacher and said, “My meditation is horrible, I feel so distracted, my legs ache, and I am constantly falling asleep.”

“It will pass,” the teacher said matter-of-factly.

A week later, the student came back to his teacher. “My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive!”

“It will pass,” the teacher said matter-of-factly, again.

—Zen teaching

We may think something painful is bad for us, and something that feels good is positive. But this is not so. We may be rejecting something that could be meaningful because it makes us uneasy initially. We may be staying attached to something that is harmful, simply because it is familiar. It’s impossible to realize what is truly beneficial when we live in this way. As Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi has said, the great gift of zazen is to be able to hold all the world in the palm of our hands.
What is it that you chase after and hold on to? What is it that you routinely avoid, reject, or hide from? Can you see what a toll this takes on you? Does this way of being bring comfort, safety, or happiness? Be honest with yourself. That’s all that’s needed, honesty.

When we begin to let go, to open our hands, minds, and hearts, we reverse this age-old pattern. We begin to see that what we like or dislike is not a measure of anything. We cannot build our lives around it. We often dislike something because we know nothing about it and recoil from something that may be entirely good. Beyond that, our likes and dislikes are constantly changing. One day, something that we adore may cause us to recoil.

As you undertake the task to live a life of true satisfaction, do not separate what you like from what you dislike; don’t chase after one thing and reject another. Instead, slowly open your mind and hands to everything.

Open Hands

When Dogen, a great Zen master, was young, he went to China to study Zen. Dogen spent many years there, and then undertook the dangerous journey back to Japan. When he reached his homeland, many people had heard about him and came to see him. When they asked him what he had learned during all those years in the monastery, he said, “I came back with nothing but empty hands.”
Empty hands are precious. When our hands are empty, not grasping, they become supple and available. They can feel, they can touch, reach out to others, give and accept gifts in return. Dogen’s open hands were available to all of life. He was not holding on to what he liked and pushing away the rest. He was willing to accept and be with it all.
Empty your hands. What are you holding on to tightly? Can you open your hands for a moment and let it go? Can you stop grasping that which you desire and pushing away what may not feel good? See yourself opening your hands and allowing something to go. See yourself opening a fist you may have clenched to fight or reject part of life. Stop fighting and allow everything to be as it is, including yourself.

By Eshin Brenda Shoshanna

Koans are a powerful medicine and they must not be ignored. These ancient questions and stories coming from the world of Zen hold a key to transforming suffering and seeing life with new eyes. 

Simple, direct, and inscrutable, koans refuse to be understood logically or rationally. Our usual strategies will not do. Koans jog the mind and make us laugh. As we grasp their inner meaning, life suddenly ceases to be a problem and instead turns into an adventure, with surprises along the way.

Life presents challenges daily. As we learn how to see these challenges as koans, life turns around. All that we encounter becomes part of our koan, and problems become a source of strength.   

Where Is Our Koan Hiding?

Life throws koans at us constantly. The sudden loss of someone we love stops the thinking mind and leaves us stunned in the face of the great unknown. We ask, Why is this happening? What will happen next? Questions like these are deep koans.

These everyday life koans are often the most powerful. They are designed to push us beyond logic into a new way of knowing and living. They remind us that life is fundamentally unknowable, truly impossible to figure out. 

Do You Have A Big Problem To Solve?

Good. First Thing, Forget About It.

Move the Mountain Without Using Your Hands

All kinds of mountains appear in our lives and all kinds of situations seem larger than we are. They feel immovable, hemming us in. Our immediate response is to try to adjust the circumstances, to move the mountain with our hands. We want to fix this or that, and using our cunning intellect, we start to maneuver. However, the more we try to alter circumstances according to our usual understanding, the more tangled they often become.  

We may not see that what we are trying to solve is not really what we’re up against. The so-called problem may have appeared in our lives simply to ask us to listen and look more deeply. When we do that, we finally give up both question and answer, and clarity and wisdom come by themselves. 

We seldom face our problems as koans. Instead, we dream up all kinds of answers, searching for understanding in books. We grab at secondhand explanations and cling to them. This is not to say that study is unimportant, but the answers we find belong to someone else. They’re not yet our own. We haven’t personally taken the question into our life, sat with it, engaged with it deeply. We haven’t allowed the question to do its work upon us, make us strong, bring us to life. From the Zen point of view, that’s a missed opportunity. Reaching for secondhand answers is a way of avoiding your life and your truth.

Secondhand Answers Will Not Do

Zen teachers give students koans and demand a response. 

“Bring me the answer!” they may yell, “Your very life depends on it.”  

When we bring a prefabricated answer to a teacher, they’ll reject it time and time again. Unless you live from the truth of your life, it isn’t yet real.  You are only following along with others, an imitation person. What a missed opportunity!

Despite rejection from the teacher, the koan can still grab you, and when it does, how wonderful! The new dance has begun. 

When You Become You, Zen Becomes Zen 

Koans demand that you become who you are. Usually, we copy others or compare ourselves to them. This person is right, this one is wrong. This one is better, this one is worse. We try to be the best of all, modeling ourselves after others.

Koan practice stops all that. It allows you to find your true voice and honest responses. What do you say? If you pretend to be someone you’re not, the interview with the teacher is over! Come back next time. 

Painted Cakes Never Satisfy Hunger

If we go into a restaurant starving and read the menu over and over, we still won’t be full. We must order the food, eat it, see how it tastes, and digest it on our own. We must let it nourish us. Same with a koan. Koans are food, filled with vital energy. We must eat them up with our very own life. By working with koans, we discover who we are and what we’re doing on this precious earth.

You Are Not Working On Your Koan, Your Koan Is Working On You

When we receive our lives as a koan, nothing becomes a problem, simply a new experience to be received.  Rather than get caught in a battle with endless drama, issues begin to resolve themselves. So how do we proceed? There are many wonderful guidelines for taking this journey that have been offered throughout the years. Here are just a few which can be applied to all aspects of life.

Don’t Fight the Mountain

Rather than trying to solve the koan, make friends with it and welcome whatever comes.   As we stop fighting, complaining, and objecting to everything, we can deeply experience our situation, and our innate wisdom starts to flow.  For example, if your mountain, or koan, is a terrible relationship and you fight it or push it away, you’ll simply repeat the same cycle. If instead, you receive the situation as a koan and embrace it, larger truths will be revealed.  

Listen To What Your Koan Is Trying To Tell You

Instead of imposing your ideas upon the problem, stop and listen to what your koan is trying to tell you. As you do this, you may see that your mountain does not need to be moved at all. The more you listen, the sooner the mountain will change by itself.  

Sit with Your Koan Like a Mother Hen Sitting on Her Eggs to Keep them Warm

Working with a koan is like a mother hen sitting on her nest, keeping the little chicks inside warm. She doesn’t abandon her chicks but gives them all the time they need. When the chicks are ready, they’ll pop through the shell and come to life all by themselves. 

Same with your koan. Give it time. When it’s ready the koan will burst through the shell of your delusions all by itself. Boom. Oh my! 

In the Readiness of Time, All Is Revealed

“When it’s soup, it’s soup.”

As you spend time with your koan, it cooks you. Patience, endurance, and fortitude are needed.  Forget about looking for an answer, enjoy each moment of the journey, be with it one hundred percent. 

Pass One Day, Fail the Next

We can pass the koan one day and bring the same answer the next day and fail. We can even bring an answer we know is right, and it’s rejected. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it. One day our spouse may love us, and the next day, turn away. We may spend hours trying to figure out why.  It does no good.

The teacher, like life itself, must say No again and again until we are finished with good and bad, right and wrong; until we stop clinging to the need for approval and expecting everything to go our way. When this is done, we have passed our koan. 

A teacher is here to make us more confused, to mirror our confusion and the strange ways in which we engage with life. And to insist that we Make A Response! 

Make a Response

Zen is not about withdrawing, transcending, or saying No to life. Our koans force us to Make a Response! This reminds us that it is crucial to both hear and respond to the call of life. In the silence, we sit and listen, but do not linger. Once off the cushion, we act.  

My beloved teacher passed away and took all his koans with him. He took all his answers, too. When I pick up one of the koans, I am with him again. There is no space between us. The koans connect us with eternity as well.