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A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.
If your head turns, you see that the floating waterweeds along the old riverbank are motionless. 

—Keizan Jokin

We just finished a long retreat with this verse of Keizan’s as a launching pad. He wrote a verse for each of the fifty-three enlightenment stories, spanning 1600 years, that he collected into the text that he titled The Transmission of Light. This verse about the solitary boat was written for the thirty-seventh story, which is about a teacher named Yunyan. It appears just before the enlightenment story of his more famous student, Dongshan.

In some accounts, Yunyan is portrayed as a Chan failure. I like that about him. He spent twenty years with the famous teacher Baizhang and left without understanding Baizhang’s teaching. His friend and brother practitioner, Daowu, only studied for one year with Baizhang before he felt the need to leave. He convinced Yunyan to come with him as he went to visit other teachers. Among them was another famous teacher named Nanquan, but they did not stay there long before moving on to a teacher named Yaoshan.

Some people have a knack for koan practice, Yunyan was not one of them, neither was I, and neither are a number of other people. I find encouragement in Yunyan’s story, his perseverance, twenty years with one teacher and still not getting it. I also appreciate his ability to let go and hear the advice of his friend Daowu, encouraging him to come with him to check out other teachers. I particularly appreciate the fact that it was in responding to Yaoshan’s question about the teaching of Baizhang, that Yunyan had received many years before, that became the occasion of his awakening. We hear things, we have experiences, that take time to mature and ripen in us.

I’m looking forward to exploring Keizan’s verse about the solitary boat in the light of Yunyan’s story.

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—David