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.