Huangbo's Dreg Slurpers

Huangbo once said to the community, "you're all slurpers of dregs. running around looking for teachings- how will you ever arrive where you are? You keep searching for an enlightened master who is going to give you something you don't have. Don't you know that in all of china there isn't a single teacher of zen?"  A monk came forward and said, "then what about all those monasteries and their eminent abbots?" Huangbo replied, "i didn't say there's no zen- just that there aren't any teachers."

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Martin Buber said, all living is meeting. Enlightenment isn't something someone has and can give us. There are no teachers and there's nothing to teach but we need each other, and in the mystery of our meeting something occurs that's more than either of us, more than the two together.

Zhaozho's Not Landing Anywhere

Zhaozho once said, "the truth is easy to find. Just avoid making distinctions and be pure. But as soon as you say or do anything at all you make a distinction, and even purity depends on impurity to be pure. As for me, i don't land anywhere and i'm not pure. What do you say?"

A monk responded: "Since you don't land anywhere, can you say anything?"

Zhaozho said, "I don't know."

The monk shot back, "if you don't know how can you say you don't land anywhere?"

Zhaozho said, "asking the question is enough. Just bow and go."

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

We're all looking for heaven, which is later and elsewhere. Actually everything in front of us right now is a miracle, here and then gone, forever. What's the nature of that miracle? I don't know: no one does, and that's it's nature. You can't even really say that: but you have to keep on asking the question.That's what makes us human.

Face to Face with Linji

In a formal zen questioning ceremony Elder Ting asked the tough teacher Linji, "What's the essential truth?" Linji got up off his ceremonial chair, grabbedTing by the lapels of his robe, and hit him three or four times. Ting stood there speechless until one of the other students said, "Why don't you bow?" As Ting, still in a daze, started to make his formal leaving bows he suddenly had an insight into the truth.

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Wouldn't it be nice if someone could tell us what the truth was? Then we'd have it forever. But any truth that's really worth knowing can't be explained. It arises as a result of our meeting one another, nose to nose, face to face, intimately. "Bowing" means plunging into our life with gratitude. When we are willing to do that, come what may, the effective truth will dawn on us.

Falling Down in the Snow

Once a Zen Master was walking along in a snowstorm and he heard a distant cry for help. Looking up and down he couldn't find anyone until finally he noticed a depression in a big snowdrift. Someone had tripped and fallen inside. "I'll help you!" he shouted enthusiastically, as he plunged down beside the person deep in the snowdrift.

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer:

This seems ridiculous. What a way to help! Now there are two of them freezing and struggling to get up. Wouldn't it have made more sense to lend a hand and an arm? Well, temporarily yes, but ultimately no. We do need all sorts of effective help: we should get it when we need it, and give it when we can. But our biggest problems (love and life, loss and death) are not easily solved, and the greatest help we can offer or receive is to know that we are not alone, that our life is shared deeply with one person, with everyone. This is the kind of help the silly snowy Zen Master meant to give. Is that so?

Hakuun's Child

Hakuun Zenji was taking care of a temple in a small town. The daughter of one of his parishioners got pregnant, and not wanting to let on who the father really was, she told her parents, "It was him, that dirty old priest at the temple." The parents quietly fumed over this, but waited till the child was born to express themselves. They knocked at the temple gate, handed over the yowling newborn, and said, "This is your handiwork, you poor-excuse-for-a-priest: now you can take care of it!" "Is that so, is that so?" Hakuun said, probably not a little startled at the encounter.

After a few years the girl, overcome with remorse, told her parents the truth. Completely chagrined, they trooped back up to the temple gate, made deep humble bows of apology and asked for the child back. "You are such a wonderful priest, so accepting, so serene," they repeated over and over, heads low to the ground. "Is that so, is that so?" Hakuun said.

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

We are so passionate about our reputations that we sometimes mistake them for ourselves. We end up living externally, so bound up with others' views of us that we lose track of our inner core, and run up and down with all life's victories and defeats. How wonderful it would be to emulate old Hakuun, always ready to accept what comes with equanimity, good or bad. How wonderful to be able to live without control and without fear, taking absolutely everything that happens as the medicine we need right now. That's the way to stay healthy!

Like Reaching Back for Your Pillow

Once Yunyan asked Daowu, "Kwanyin the bodhisattva of compassion has so many hands and eyes. What are they all for?" Daowu answered him, "It's like reaching back for your pillow in the night."

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Kwanyin is traditionally depicted as a woman with many arms and many heads, an image of extensive helping. Such compassion seems like something special, the activity of an altruism we aspire to but do not ever seem to actually achieve. These old Zen masters had a different idea. Compassion, they tell us, is something very natural and everyday: in fact, all activity, rightly understood and truly lived, is nothing but compassion. The world's turning, the living and dying of all creatures, even every thought in our minds... nothing but compassion. When you reach back for your pillow in the night you do it reflexively, without calculation or motivation, and you don't know and can't even see what you are doing!

Now Hear It

On a rainy day at Green Gulch temple the poet Gary Snyder told this story: Years before, when he was a young man studying Zen in Japan, he had attended a practice period which featured a daily lecture by the roshi. Every afternoon, at the scheduled time for the talk, a fierce monsoon rain storm would come up, pounding on the temple roof so that it was impossible to hear the roshi's voice, which was, even under the best of conditions, faint. Day by day it went on like this, not a single audible word. Some years later Gary met a man who had also attended that practice period. The man said to him, "Do you remember those dharma talks we couldn't hear all training period long? Well I am beginning to hear them now."

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

In Zen practice we are always listening to talks and studying the sayings of the ancients. It's funny that for all its emphasis on silent sitting and sudden insight, Zen has produced an enormous literature that seems to require extensive commentary in order to be understood. But in the end knowledge really isn't important, and the virtue of all the listening and reading is simply that we experience the feeling behind it. The roshi's words aren't so important. He or she may use a lot of them, but it's the flavor and scent, the sense of life that is conveyed, not so much by the words themselves, as by their presentation and context, that counts. I have no doubt that the man really was beginning only now, years later, to to actually hear what the Roshi had been saying. Can you hear it?

Walking on Water

Once Huangbo and another monk were on pilgrimage. They came to a wide stream, almost a river, and planted their staffs, standing on the bank silently, watching the water go by. Finally the monk hiked up the skirts of his robe and walked across, gliding on top of the water like a sailboat. Huangbo muttered in disgust," If I'd've known you were like this I'd've never agreed to go with you!" and he turned around and went on his own way.

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Zen spirituality isn't magical. It's pretty down to earth. The point is not to be able to transcend the rules, escape the ordinary, but rather to see and live out the miracle that is everyday life. There is no contradiction between body and spirit, between mind and matter. These are just words we use to understand one thing. Zen practitioners must be grounded, walking with two feet upon the real earth. This isn't a compromise with ultimate truth: it is an expression of it. If you want to cross rivers take a boat, if you want to fly take an airplane, if you want to read minds read a book. Which moon is it?

Daowu and Yunyan

Daowu and Yunyan were old Dharma companions. They had been through a lot together in their studies with their old teacher Yaoshan, and they were always quizzing one another about the teachings. Once Daowu found Yunyan intently sweeping the temple grounds with an old straw broom. Daowu said, "Too busy!" and Yunyan immediately replied, "But there is one here who isn't busy." Daowu chuckled and said, "Oh, so there are two moons?" Yunyan held the broom aloft and said, "Which moon is this?"

commentary by Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Somehow we humans always want to know what is real, what is true? These old Zen masters don't take a thing for granted. They see each occasion as a new chance to ask the question fresh. We all have to sweep the floor every day, it's the price we pay for being alive, but how do we do it? Are we immersed in our busy lives, not really knowing who or where we are, or do we have our full composure? And is there really a difference? When we plunge wholeheartedly into our life all our acts are endless questions, infinite answers. What else could there be beyond this?