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Yunmen, teaching the community, said, “The old Buddha and a pillar embrace—how available are they to each other?”  He answered for them,  “On South Mountain clouds gather, on North Mountain rain falls.”

—The Blue Cliff Record, Case 83

This morning, I woke in the dark to the delicious sound of rain on the roof. Late in the season, we in California are getting another series of atmospheric rivers—those long narrow storms heavy with warm, moist air, sometimes called the pineapple express—which will bring several inches of rain to the green foothills and drop several feet of snow on the divides and basins of the High Sierra.

The sound reminded me of years ago when I was in sesshin, awake at night listening to the sound of heavy dewdrops falling from the eves outside the window. How utterly splendid was the sound of each drop before it hit. But I wander.

Clouds gather on South Mountain while rain falls on North Mountain. It may be inconceivable to connect the two. Koun Yamada, our ancestral teacher, cautions against it. “When we hear about clouds on South Mountain and rain on North Mountain the temptation is all too great to conclude that there is some connection between the two. And as soon as we do that, we are caught up in concepts and are far indeed from the spirit of the koan. We have been caught in the trap which Yunmen has laid for us.” His advice is to wonder at the thusness of each: how wonderful the clouds, how amazing the rain.

But maybe Yunmen’s “trap” is actually an invitation to embrace that which is irrationally linked and to explore the deeper, more mysterious relationships in our lives. Like the old Buddha and the pillar, to what degree are we open and vulnerable to the people and things around us? That which seems fractured may actually be part of a greater whole. We need not explain it; we can just live it.

Ed Espe Brown, the Soto priest and author of No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, relates a story about the famous Italian chef Massimo Bottura. One day an assistant chef came in and confessed he had dropped and broken a whole tray of lemon tarts. Instead of throwing out the broken and fractured tarts, Bottura folded them into a lemon pudding, and it has since become one of the favorite desserts at his Osteria Francescana.

One time Baizhang was walking outside with his teacher, Mazu, when they flushed a brace of ducks. The teacher asked, “Where did they go?” Zhang replied, “They flew away.” The teacher grabbed his nose and twisted it, saying, “When did they ever fly away?” Zhang returned to his room, and a monk found him weeping. Later, the monk came back and Zhang was laughing. The monk asked him about it, and Zhang said, “Before I was crying, and now I’m laughing.” The ducks and his nose shared an inconceivable co-mingling, both in laughing and in crying.

Last week, I spoke with an old friend, who informed me he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I had recognized some decline in him in the past year, but the news was very saddening. Going forward, we agreed to check in regularly. Later, I went to a wonderful birthday dinner with friends, and afterward we all went to a club to listen to some amazing folk and blues guitar. It was fantastic. So sad and so fun, co-mingling.

Xuetou, himself an old Buddha, writes in his appreciatory verse on this koan:

In suffering happiness
In happiness, suffering

Perhaps just because it is fractured, life somehow works.

—Jon Joseph

COME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.

Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community