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A couple of nights ago, my dog Mocha Puppachino was restless in the very early morning, so I got up to let her out. After a few minutes, she came back, and we returned upstairs. Falling into a half sleep, I began to dream.

I was standing on the side of a wide dirt road. Going down the lane was a procession of indigenous Aztecs or Mayans, with high cheekbones and aquiline noses, lightly dressed in ceremonial wear, passing in profile from left to right. Their colors were earth tones of ocher, soft yellows and browns.

In my sleep I began to repeat to myself, “Dios pasas!”, “Dios pasas!”, over and over again, almost as if I were saying a prayer or holding a koan. Though my Spanish is not very good, I translated the phrase in my mind as, “The gods are passing by!” (My Spanish-speaking daughter later corrected my grammar un piquito.)

I’m not fully sure what the dream meant, but I had a strong feeling of inclusion. I was witness to the sacred; not sacred as an idea, but as a relationship. With great warmth and appreciation, I understood I was being watched over. The gods too were being witnessed by me. Each of us was expressing our essential relationship to the other, in that moment and place. To make ourselves whole, we needed each other.

A dream-like koan came to me in connection to the dream itself:

Shoushan said to the assembly, “If you attain it with the first phrase, you will be teacher of buddhas and ancestors. If you attain with the second phrase, you will be teacher of humans and gods. If you attain it with the third phrase, you will not even save yourself.” A monk asked, “At which statement did you attain it, teacher?” Shoushan said, “The moon sets, it is midnight. I walk through the marketplace.” (BS 76)

Our movement through the dark and empty marketplace is singular and sometimes deeply lonely. Yet it is full of potential: absence completely open to receiving presence, as David Hinton writes.

Soon enough, farmers and merchants arrive on their donkey carts and horses. The horizon lightens and the sun comes over the ridge. Women with sleepy children in tow come to shop for dinner; chickens squawk and dogs bark. And the buddhas, ancestors and gods are there. They walk among us even now.

Hongzhi Zenghue in his verse on this koan writes:

We meet the lowly and then the noble
We meet the noble and then lowly
Getting the jewel through formlessness
The ultimate way is continuous

—Jon Joseph

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Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community