When I was about in the fourth grade, I joined the Boy Scouts where I stayed into high school. I remember my mother shopping with me for a khaki shirt and scarf at H.C. Capwell’s department store and then myself sewing the patches “Troop 302”, a touch crooked, on the left shoulder. The Scouts gave us a great chance to go camping, which I loved, and eventually I saved enough money from mowing lawns to go to the council’s summer camp, called Wolfboro, in the Sierras.

A monk asked Great Master Ma, “Apart from the four propositions and beyond the hundred negations, I ask you teacher, to clearly show me the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West.”
The Great Master said: ”I’m tired today and can’t explain it for you. Go ask Zhizang.”
 
—The Book of Serenity, Case 6

There was a tradition at the camp that on the first evening, the Tenderfeet were taken on a snipe hunt. I didn’t even know what a snipe was. The older boys gave us younger ones a flashlight, a plate and spoon from our mess kit, and guided us into the forest to search for the elusive bird. We were told to bang the plate with the spoon and yell, “Here snipe! Here snipe! Come here, snipe!”

The monk then goes to Zhizang, who tells him he has a headache and can’t explain, but suggests he seek out elder brother Hai (Baizhang). Hai says that, “For all the time I have been here, I still don’t get it.”

We were excited when we headed into the woods, and soon enough one of the older boys shouted, “There is one over here!” We ran over shining our beams, but the bird had fled. Another boy shouted from the other direction, “There’s one!” and we rushed toward him. Alas, the snipe once again escaped. After about a half hour of banging and yelling, and several more missed chances, we made our way back to the campfire where the scoutmaster had hot chocolate waiting for us. We laughed and joked around the fire.

The hapless monk then returns to Mazu, who tells him, “Zang’s head is white, and Hai’s head is black.”

What is our monk searching for here? It is the same things you and I are wanting: inclusion, intimacy, and some sense of the light. What he probably does not realize is that the search itself is full of inclusion, intimacy, and light. The search itself is the fulfillment of his deepest wants. In the kindest way, that is what the three teachers are trying to show him. Koun Yamada writes of this koan: “It is important to realize that each of these statements is the complete manifestation of the ultimate truth of Buddhism, the meaning of coming from the West.” Each statement is an invitation to join in the play of the universe.

After a few years in the Scouts, I was asked to watch over some Tenderfeet coming to camp. One morning we woke up and, though we had bacon to cook for breakfast, someone had forgotten the darned bacon stretcher. So I asked several younger boys to go around to other camps and see if they could borrow a left-handed bacon stretcher. They searched and searched, but could not find one.

—Jon Joseph

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Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community