Utterly Useless Stuff!

A pebble striking bamboo. A deer calling from a nearby stream. A glimpse of a flower in the corner of your eye. A shout:  Ha! A sound, a taste, a touch, a smell, something that cuts through the personal identifications and attachments as the heart opens to “just this.” Linji employed the shout, at times calling out “Thief.” Yunmen often used a one simple word response to students’ questions: sesame rice cake, barrier, dried shit stick.

Over my month long hiatus from teaching, Yunmen has been coming to me in meditation, as I worked in the barns and pulled weeds in the garden.  Early in the month it was the longer koans, but as the month progressed Yunmen’s one word responses came, one after another. Soon Yunmen began to speak his simple responses as I moved through the my day, meeting the occasion with a word:  Honeybee, Orange, Ironweed, Goldenrod – each word a gateway, an opening into being here without regret or complaint. Utterly useless stuff.

Yunmen goes to visit the old teacher Muzhou, walking up to the door:

The moment Muzhou saw Yunmen approach, he shut the door. Thereupon Yunmen knocked at the door, and Muzhou asked, “Who is it?”
Yunmen replied, “It’s me!”
Muzhou asked, “What are you here for?”
Yunmen said, “I am not yet clear about myself. Please, Master, give me guidance!”
Muzhou opened the door, cast one glance, shut it again, and withdrew.
In this manner Yunmen went to knock at the door on three consecutive days. On the third day, when Muzhou set out to open the door, Yunmen forced his way in. Muzhou seized him and said, “Say it, say it!”
Yunmen hesitated.
Muzhou pushed him out, saying, “Utterly useless stuff.”
Through this Yunmen attained awakening.

What is remarkable to me about this story, is that Muzhou is in accord with the Dao as he meets the moment, his interlocutor, so that finally, the third time is the charm. Yunmen wakes up. The beauty of Zen is that we are guided by thieves — those who would take away our ideas and conceptions about life, our self-identification, and throw us into the deep end of life that we might learn to swim. Anything else, “Utterly useless stuff.”

Awakening is nothing.  It is not a thing among other things, things that can be called out and fixed and manipulated like cars or political campaigns.  Yunyan, Dongshan’s teacher says it like this: as one moves step by step through life – each moment, each meeting, “just this is it.” Nothing stands apart from awakening.

Join us Thursday.

—David Parks