REGISTER

As Dongshan was about to go, he asked, “After your death, if people ask whether I have your portrait (grasped your teaching), how should I respond?”

After a long pause, Yunyan answered, “Just this. This.” 

—Book of Serenity, Case 49

Turning sharply left into a grove of eucalyptus we entered the one-lane road that leads down to the Zen farm. My daughter, who has a few weeks off as she decides what graduate program to attend in the fall, is on a two-week meditation retreat. She met us in the parking lot, and soon we were hiking down a gravel path to the beach. At the beach she went for a quick dip in the frigid Pacific, dried off and, after hanging out a bit, we walked back to get her to the evening meal on time.

Part way up the trail, our dog, who was on leash, jumped the resident bobcat which ran into a small side temple. To the left of us was Redwood Creek, thick in willows and gushing with new rains. On the right were the winter gardens of the farm, planted with fava bean cover crop, and beyond them chaparral blanketed the slopes of the creek’s gulch.

The retreat includes a study period, and my daughter had picked from the library A Flower Falls, a translation of Haku’un Yasutani’s commentary on Dogen’s richly poetic Genjo Koan. I have been working with the Five Ranks commentary by Yasutani, our ancestral teacher, over the past year and have become pretty familiar with his world view.

My daughter said she was surprised at how critical Yasutani was of his own Soto School of Zen and his strong advocacy of an embodied kensho experience. Thinking the need to explain Yasutani, I started to tell her about the differences between the Rinzai koan and the Soto shikantaza schools. But almost immediately my words sounded small and flat to my ears. So I stopped explaining and just said, “They’re all nice people.”

We continued walking without speaking for a time. I gave her a hug as we moved up the trail toward the zendo and dining hall. Soon enough, the magic of the farm returned; the ambient light of the hall mixed with the smell of vegetables cooking in shoyu.

Not long after Dongshan left his teacher, he saw his own image reflected in the water while crossing a creek and wrote:

Looking through others’ eyes is not necessary; we only create distance.
I now go my own way entirely alone, yet I meet it everywhere.
Now it is just who I am, at the same time I am not what it is.
When we come to understand, for the first time we know this true suchness.

—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