Foreword

Dìzàng asked Fǎyǎn, “Where are you going?”

Fǎyǎn said, “Around on pilgrimage.”

Dìzàng said, “What are you on pilgrimage for?”

Fǎyǎn said, “I don’t know.”

Dìzàng said, “Not knowing is nearest.”

— Case 20, Book of Serenity

Chris has studied Zen with me for nearly three decades. The pilgrimage of our lives has been filled with many Zen retreats and countless face-to-face meetings, phone dialogues, and written inquiries. Our intention has always been to deepen and clarify our understanding of the immediacy of present-tense experience. In this process our appreciation of the vast silent mystery that is our life reveals itself. It is here that the deep comes to the surface in the moments of everyday life. As the renowned Zen Master Dogen said, “The whole world is mind ground, the whole world is blossom heart.”

Of the many shared experiences Chris and I have had over the years, some stand out because they have a holographic quality and are reminders that the whole is revealed in each of the particulars of our lives. As the Heart Sutra proclaims, “Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form.” Essential nature and its phenomenal expression are always one.

In the 1990s, Chris attended a weeklong Zen retreat that I led on a ranch deep in the wilderness of the Carson National Forest in New Mexico. Nestled among the old-growth Ponderosa pines we sat and melted into the mountains, supported by visitations from elk and bear, and the chorus of wild birds.

After a week of intense formal practice, it was the custom to share a cup of tea. Each member of the sangha was also encouraged to present a short comment or gesture that revealed a moment of immediacy that stood out during the retreat.

This kind of sharing as an expression of the koan of our lives is greatly revered in the Zen tradition. The less that is said, the better—a picture is worth a thousand words. A simple gesture or phrase can reveal the true meaning of koan as “truth happening place.”

The Zen stick was passed around the sharing circle so that each person had the opportunity to present some living truth from the week of silent sitting. When the stick arrived in Chris’s hand, he lifted up his tea cup and poured warm tea over his head. Laughter and tears filled the hall. Just this.

The vignettes and teachings of Finding Zen in the Ordinary are compelling because they are expressions of the warm heart and clear mind of compassion and understanding. A vignette is a short evocative account of everyday life. It is also a photographic technique, in which a small illustration or portrait is shaded gradually at the edges, which leaves no definite line or boundary between foreground and background. The portraits of this collection are the particulars of a person’s life: “Walking through the Chapel Square Mall” or “Leader of the Choir.” The background or common denominator of them all is the essential nature that permeates all of life. “Buddha nature pervades the whole universe, revealing itself right here, right now.”

It is my hope that the stories and teachings of this book will inspire the reader to grow in love and understanding. May they inspire each of us in our own unique way to go forward in service of alleviating the suffering of our troubled world.

Zen Master Bo Mun

29. Who Saved Who?

I took the spring semester off in my junior year of college. Fully confused about my life’s direction, I found myself back at my parent’s house with no plans and nothing to do.

My father, in his concern, found me a carpentry job with a middle-aged man named Jonas. Jonas had been out of work when a friend of my father hired him to repair a run-down colonial-era house. Jonas wasn’t a carpenter by profession, but he was handy and had done repairs on his own home.

I was also good with my hands, but uninitiated in carpentry. Jonas became my teacher. He showed me how to handle a cat’s paw to remove nails, hold a plumb bob to find true vertical, and snap a chalk line—to line things up.

As we worked, we talked. Mostly he talked, and I listened. Not only did I learn about carpentry, I learned how he had lost his family inheritance by trying to build a new tennis center. I learned how he needed willpower to avoid ordering a drink when we went out for lunch together. I learned how he felt when his wife got upset after he left unwashed dishes in the sink. And I heard his heartache when he spoke about his eldest son, who was often wracked by mental illness.

Jonas honored me with his teaching and attention. He wished to be good to everyone and suffered from feelings of falling short.

My time with Jonas changed me. His counsel and care helped me return to college the next semester, and led me to work as a carpenter after college for eight years.

Decades later, I returned to attend Jonas’s funeral. He had died of an aneurism. At the service, his four children talked about their father, and how he had told them stories about tunnels under the lawn that led to magical places.

His eldest daughter spoke to me after the service. “You made a great difference to my dad,” she said. “That was a difficult time in his life. The way you listened to him when you were working together turned his life around. He was able to get things back together.”