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A student asked Zhaozhou, “For a long time I’ve heard about the stone bridge of Zhaozhou. But now that I’ve come, I see only a log thrown across the river.”
Zhaozhou said, “You only see the log bridge, you just don’t see the stone bridge.”
“What is the stone bridge like?”
“It lets donkeys cross, it lets horses cross.”

—The Blue Cliff Record, Case 52

An arched stone bridge. Yes. Horses and donkeys clattering across. Yes, yes. Such powerful and sensual images. In reading this koan, horse memories and bridge dreams have visited me again and again. Look, look, they say.

There is some historical context to this koan: one of the three old stone bridges in China was built at a town called Zhaozhou, not far from the famous teacher’s temple. The river floods, or dries up from drought, but the bridge holds. It is such a grand old bridge, allowing a whole parade of life: dogs and fleas, rats, bandits and emperors. We too may cross.

Yet sometimes all we can see is the narrow, rickety log plank, with its uncertainty and dangers. The crossing becomes treacherous, the world now more fluid. “As I cross the bridge,” offers Fu Ta-shih, “the bridge flows, the water is still.” We don’t know how the crossing will go.

As a kid, I was around horses a lot. My best friend through middle school was a competitive Western–style horseman, eventually winning the state junior championship for barrel racing. When I stayed over, we never rode, but always tended to the horses. With hand hooks we swung green hay bales off the pickup truck. Splitting the alfalfa into flakes for the animals would release a wonderful sweet herbal scent. And the week–old pine shavings, used for bedding in the stalls, were soaked with horse piss with its ammonia stink and mixed with fresh shit. I loved shoveling that crap into a wheelbarrow, being close to the horses.

That semi–rural neighborhood is now long gone in time and space; the creeks got paved over, and the fields were filled in with houses. Gary and his horses moved away, and we lost contact. After several decades, I found him on the internet and we reconnected. I worry about him sometimes. A while ago they found a tumor in his brain they had to take out. And three years ago, he discovered a heart condition the doctors called a “widow–maker,” which is what his father died from.

It sometimes feels like we are in an era of log bridges, flowing bridges with no familiar structures to rely on. On the phone with an old Zen friend, she mentioned how dangerous the world has become: Washington, Gaza, and fires. It was hard to disagree. Later, sitting outside in the backyard in the warm sun with my dog, a lawnmower kicked up next door. It was the most beautiful essence of summer sound. I’m not sure if the sound was a log bridge or a stone bridge, a horse or a donkey. Maybe that’s not the point, as long as we can cross.

—Jon Joseph

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Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community