r/zenmu

Blue Cliff Record #32: Elder Ting Stands Motionless

Elder Ting asked Linji, "What is the great meaning of the Buddhist Teaching?" Linji came down off his meditation seat, grabbed and held Ting, gave him a slap, and then pushed him away. Ting stood there motionless.

A monk standing by said, "Elder Ting, why do you not bow?" Just as Ting bowed, he suddenly was greatly enlightened.

---

The Elder asks a question that has probably plagued a lot of different people for centuries. What's the great meaning?

Enter Linji, who's answer is a grab, slap, and push.

Ting stood motionless. I'm sure I would have, too. Me, analytically minded as I am, trying to wring out every bit of water from the sponge, would be grasping desperately for the underlying meaning.

But the shock of the responses contained no doctrine, no metaphysics. Just immediate function.

Ting, for a moment, had his question-machine stalled out. Not unconscious, not in some mystical trance, but, sudden interruption of the interpretive structure. Zen literature often circles around these moments... stunned silence, speechlessness, interruption. Mazu would call out people's names when they'd turned to walk away, and in some instances, say "just this."

The bystander monk asks, "Why do you not bow?"

Do you not recognize your mind when it's devoid of philosophizing about the experience? (Not that this is a state to be clung to or desired, Zen is suspicious of turning something into a consciousness-state.)

Shouting, kicking someone in the chest, knocking someone over, all of this isn't to induce a blank state -- and it's not that non-thinking itself is enlightenment -- more like the ordinary conceptual machinery stalls and something prior to the self-referential process becomes visible. The point is living freedom, not frozen consciousness. For a brief moment, the internal commentator is no longer taken as authoritative. How will you speak?

So the Zen Masters bring you back to reality as it is. Just bow. Wash your bowl. Not because mundane acts or washing the bowl is magically holy, but because reality was never elsewhere.

Guishan kicks over the water bottle. Longtan blows out Deshan's candle. Joshu says "wash your bowl."

The Masters don't shout, slap, or absurd answer as a doorway into another realm, they disrupt the belief that there is another realm to enter. They do not reveal another realm, they remove distance from this one. Nothing beyond this, nothing missing within it.

---

So one might ask, well, if nothing is missing within it, how do I myself become enlightened? The becoming is the problem. Enlightenment isn't leaving the ordinary world, but no longer mistaking ordinary experience for something that needs to be completed by interpretation. Zen keeps removing floorboards. When Joshu said "Wash your bowl" he didn't say it was ordinary, nothing more, nor did he say the bowl is sacred reality itself, he cut off both interpretations at once. A key move here is that the Masters refute both "completions" as "ordinary" and "sacred" -- both extremes rely on a structure, "I stand apart from experience and assign it meaning."

I am still occasionally treating Zen as a correct way to interpret experience, when what Zen is trying to present is, the collapse of the need to interpret experience into a final position at all.

Subtle traps abound. Forgive my little posts on the wall. One Zen student to another. Thank you.

To be truly empty handed is still a position.

I haven't settled the finality.

To settle the finality is a position.

There's nothing to do.

Escape routes keep getting cut off.

A person with nothing to do.

No!

Yunmen said, "Do you want to know the founding teacher?" Pointing with his staff, he said, "The founding teacher is hopping on your head. Do you want to know the founding teacher's eyes? The founding teacher's eyes are under your feet." He also said, "This is tea and rice feasting ghosts and spirits. Even so, ghosts and spirits are insatiable."

Dahui commented, "Haven't you heard it said that residual illusion gives luster to life?" At that time a monk standing by coughed. Dahui said, "What's wrong with my speaking this way?" As the monk tried to come up with something to say, Dahui hit him.

---

Respect to you. We're looking at Yunmen and Dahui and the monk all together.

---

"Why did Bodhidharma come from the West" is a common Zen meme/question, synonymous with "What's the essence of Zen?" The question itself becomes the West -- somewhere else, not here. The Masters drag it back under your own feet. Yunmen said, here's Bodhidharma, hopping on your head. Immediacy. Directly in view. Your life right now. (And already I've made it sound like something to recognize.)

Even this pointing from Yunmen, he says, is sustenance for ghosts and spirits. Driven by craving, spiritual ambition, conceptual hunger, explanations, mystical fireworks, we can be so insatiable. Even Zen teaching becomes snacks for grasping mind. (Including this sentence.)

Dahui comments, "Haven't you heard it said that residual illusion gives luster to life?"

This isn't to praise delusion but to point out that life, even after insight, still carries traces of differentiation, personality, texture. The world shimmers with appearances. Zen is not blank annihilation or some sterilized medical room. Life still shines through all of this confusion.

The moment you try to pin it down neatly -- whack.

---

I've been jaw jacking a lot lately. On a forum, that's really the core of it, eh? Getting it or not getting it. It can become a nest of assertions and platitudes and one-upmanship. Still, we're here to study together (or at least that's my intention), get messy, dare to be right, dare to be wrong. The shimmer endures.

In another instance, Yunmen enters the room for instruction and just yells at the students, "Get out of here! You're fooling each other without end!" Then he asks, "Is even this a mistake?" I think this kind of self-examination is a pivotal thing. But eventually there comes an end to the acquisitional and the jaw jacking and, we hope, that we become that clear-eyed, striding through the universe unchecked sort of person. Right?

From where I'm sitting, even this is a mistake. It subtly creates the "Zen" person. A future attainment. A spiritual completion. A perfected identity.

Even "I'm the one who sees through this" is an landing point. Zen just keeps pulling up the floorboards. Like it or not.

The one who's seeing this text right now may have imagined all sorts of personal lacking. (Or not. I'm already guessing.) We're not polishing a deficient self into a perfected spiritual artifact -- the self that imagines itself fundamentally lacking is part of the confusion being examined. One still practices and studies and fails and apologizes and learns. Luster! But the flavor changes. Practice stops being a project of manufacturing worthiness. The shimmer endures before the conclusion. Before attainment, before explanation.

Zen does not say you are fundamentally broken and must become spiritually repaired. Rather, confusion comes from entanglement with mistaken identification. To "save all sentient beings" is not framed as installing something missing onto deficient people, but more like, ceasing the endless manufacturing of ideas that it's outside of yourself.

---

Forgive me. Palms together.

Started: Saturday, May 16, 2026, 3:02 PM EDT

Wild, untamed, as nature.

Caw caw caw—I'll call this fiction, but the wilderness doesn't lie.

Before I could read, adults taught me about god. The wilderness taught me what was real. One required belief, the other just required showing up. I learned from what was there. Uncoachable, not by defiance - just by necessity.

Out in the wild, I'd talk to myself out loud. Nature didn't answer in words, just kept making its sounds. But the birds would go quiet when I walked close - listening. They knew I was there.

I started thinking out loud about yes and no. Were there any other words that could do what they did? None. 'Yes' and 'no' - absolute.

With that resolved, I proceeded to test the god concept. Ok god, you're all-knowing, nothing's beyond your ability, you know yes and no. Tell me god, yes or no?

Crickets. Nothing. Dead stark silence.

Damn, I hoped god would speak to me like one of those biblical stories, and I'd become a prophet of the word... Nope, didn't happen. Ok, so I'm no one special, just like everyone else I might have known back then.

Did I mention I was also doing something akin to meditation? Yeah, a hillside that caught the afternoon sun. I couldn't fall asleep - I had somewhere to go soon. So I would daydream. The challenge: how long could I daydream without forgetting myself. That was it. Simply.

Days, months, years, seasons passed while I visited the wilderness almost daily. Human beings are a distortion, and the expressions they make are always questionable, regardless of their intent. I was slowly being socialized, learning the dance. Even so, humans didn't carry the realness I was witnessing in the wild.

Recently something stopped me: the phrase 'eye to eye, face to face' as a gateway to realness. I said 'huh'.

The wheels turned, and I went back to the wilderness in my mind. Is this true? Come on wilderness, speak clearly. I'm eye to no eye, face to no face. What's up?

I've come to understand access has back doors, exceptions, alternate routes. Being uncoachable has left me to seek guidance from an expanding wilderness - more than just that backwoods home. Didn't realize I had access, I just did. I stopped looking to people for answers. Their words compound the distortion. The wilderness taught me to look directly.

I'm part of society and independently separate at once. We may all share access to the stillness. I watch how people use it.

--

This is one chapter. More to come (maybe).

Ended: Saturday, May 16, 2026, 11:09 PM EDT

Without Zen, some of these specific loops wouldn't have happened. I might never have wondered about great doubt, enlightenment, whether or not my words were authentically Zen. But the underlying coarse consciousness may have bubbled up and attached elsewhere.

With Zen certain things are carried. But I've likened it to a thorn that you use to remove another thorn from your foot before both are discarded. Not that it can ever be fully discarded. Every step is the path. (More Zen thinking. Bah.)

Enlightenment isn't to be strived for. Great doubt is not a personal project. Noticing mind's attempt to turn "awakening" into a psychological achievement or metaphysical object. Craving for a breakthrough experience.

Meanwhile the tea's on the table cooling and the trees are in full bloom.

I often ask:

What's the deeper meaning?

How would Zen address XYZ?

I find that I'm producing increasingly refined interpretations while missing out on the fact that the Zen Masters are trying to interrupt the engine itself. I'm carrying Zen as an existential pressure.

I'm drawn to authenticity. True insight, genuine expression, non-performative realization, that which remains before concepts. But "what's really real" is one more refinement of grasping.

The more I study Zen the more I see it in everyone and everything naturally. I was more natural before this.

But the tradition of Zen gradually feels less like a special overlay to life and more like the ordinary human condition that feels alive and honest.

I suppose this is all very ordinary in Zen study. The framework thins. Ordinary life thickens. Study feels less like climbing upward and more like becoming less divided from what's already happening.

But I still feel a lot like Zuigan. "Don't deceive yourself! I won't!"

The campfire's lit here if you want to share your own summation of where your study is. Me, I'm just a self-learned nobody from the hills. You don't have to impress me. I want to meet you as an equal, not as someone with something to teach me, not as someone who wants to learn something from me. My hands are mostly empty, at least, that's my summation.

Maybe one day my identity as "Zen learner" comes to an end too. But there's something just on the precipice... right?

Right?

It’s a little too addictive to be ultra-mysterious in these subreddits. Enigmatic content online produces hyper-individualized people and then I have to come up with some way to stand out amongst everyone else who is having their own personal experience.

I am not trying to offend anyone. A simple “Hi, hello” can carry a hidden meaning like: Would I really ever want to spend time with Bhodidarma? Hui Neng? Assuming I spoke the language.

So I’m not insulting those people. Their stories are mysterious enough.

Maybe they would be fun to spend time with. It could be that the reason I’m drawn to Zen is exactly that.

Also funny to note the recent activity in the Middle East where tall buildings are being hit by far more destructive objects than commercial airliners and yet we aren’t seeing any buildings collapse in the manner all three buildings collapsed on 9/11.

These silly weapons engineers don’t realize they can cause far more damage with mythical jet fuel fires that collapse and dustify massive buildings with their special powerz. 🔥🔥🔥

And this event, that even as a child I recognized defied the laws of physics, was then used to justify invading the countries of others and the murdering of a million civilians in the name of “fighting terrorism”.

If you live in western society, you took part. No matter how small your contribution to the machine.

Weird world.

since i've made zenmu a kind of workspace for typed expression, a number of 'things' have arisen.

there is the work on myself to get clear. then translating that into text

there is the slow acclimation to some zen vocab, phrasing, posture.. translated into text

and then the personalities, each with their own expressions.. translated into text

-------

as i've mentioned elsewhere, just a layperson

i didn't walk some 'zen path' to get here

zen showed up late, like a finishing step on the no-path

a bridge-word, pointing back at the source the goobly goop may have leaked from

------

so: some work on self, a new eye so to speak. now what?

(the dishes were washed and dried long ago)

is this the land of leftover energy, to be freely given to passersby?

----

if so, that opens an odd can of words, er worms

turns out, nobody wants it - or, it has to be packaged just so

wait: rules on giving? ha.

--------

with this perceived excess, wanting to give, i glance at the headlines (and counter-headlines)

is this then a place to give?

--

what is giving, as an act?

what is a donation, if not this?

-

one way or another, i sit on a grounding

the passages pass through, meeting persistence.

this is already given.

(draft 2)

It’s been six months driving the shuttle. As far as a route goes, the scenery has to be one of the best, just right for daydream food. Still, familiarity has smoothed out new edges, leaving the 'current today' a little dull.

-

The car rolls into the rotary, as usual. Josh still doesn’t quite get the flow of it, but he likes the small smile that comes when the car leans into the circle. A round car, in a round turn, in a roundabout. An end of the road that doesn’t end.

-

Once again, right on cue, Sammy comes through the sliding doors. Josh and Sammy have settled into a kind of used‑to‑each‑other. From that alone, Josh can tell something’s up as he catches Sammy’s grin and smirk. That, and the odd box Sammy is carrying.

'Hey, Sammy.'
'Wot ya got in da box?'

Sammy opens the door one‑handed and slides into the front seat, closing it in a single, smooth swing. Sammy isn’t what you’d call athletic, but somehow everything lands balanced. Josh has noticed. Once, he even asked about it. Sammy just shrugged. Even the shrug had its feet under it.

'Hey, Josh!' Sammy settles the box on his lap, fingers resting on the lid, grin still there.

Josh feels himself waking from the drive’s slumber at the sight of Sammy and the box, but the exit is coming. Time to roll out of the circle. They ease off onto the access road.

Josh glances over, a small nervous smile. 'The box?'

Sammy’s grin brightens.

'It was being tossed out today. Annual house cleaning. The label on the outside caught my eye. I looked in, and - yeah. Couldn’t leave it.'

None of this settles Josh. If anything, the unease sharpens.

The label keeps flickering at the edge of his vision as he threads between cars.

'Sammy, tell me I’m reading that label wrong- 'Mind Viruses!??''

The words from the shuttle host set Sammy off into a soft laugh.

'Not viruses. ENGAGERS.'

'Keep your eyes on the road, but if ya looked a bit closer, ya’d see it. Somebody crossed out the first word and wrote the other. Got upset about something, I guess.'

Sammy taps the lid once, lightly, as if to check the weight.
'People, huh.'

-

Postscript:
Only the word moved.

Mistakes don't become existential evidence.

There's no self to maintain around always being correct.

There's no particular stake in the ground, no self that can be improved by altering it's contents.

Let it be a becoming without being a becoming. There is no one who must stay correct.

Do you know about emancipation? If you formulate the idea that you can understand, then you are blocked off from it.
Later, another adept said, "I dare not turn my back on you, master; for fog is rising from *your* feet!"

Then there is the story of when Beiyuan Tong left Dongshan. Dongshan said, "Where are you going?" Tong replied, "Into the mountains." Dongshan said, "Flying Monkey Ridge is steep—a fine sight!" Tong hesitated. Dongshan said, "Reverend Tong!" Tong responded, "Yes?" Dongshan said, "Why don't you go into the mountains?" At these words, Tong suddenly got the message.

The ancients were quite direct in their ways of helping others. Whenever people came to them, they would show them. In this case, he said he was going into the mountains; what does this mean?

People today do not realize clearly, inevitably making an understanding. By a bit of understanding, they have blocked themselves off. One can only investigate comprehensively through experience; one cannot understand just by intellectual interpretation. Once you have comprehended thoroughly with unified comprehension, you will no longer doubt.

Nevertheless, this is not easy to maintain. If you have entered into it correctly, you will not backslide. Thus, even if you have clarified what can be understood, that is not comparable to seeing what cannot be understood and also having the ability to maintain it. Then you will always be aware and always be alert.

This is why an ancient said, "The normal mind is the path; can one aim for it?" "If you try to head for it, you are turning away from it." Seeing as how you are not allowed to head for it, then how do you maintain it? It's not easy!

Is this not emancipation? If you seek a state of emancipation, this is what is called a cramp! Xuansha said, "The whole earth is an eon of hell; if you do not clarify yourself, this is a serious cramp." It will not do to idle away the time.”

i've done this.

scrolling - context borrowed, pasted.

irritation stirs 'others words packaged as sharing?'

why the shortcut?

--

fear whispers - 'your voice wont hold'

so borrow anothers, hide behind their weight

--

cursor blinks

keyboard waits

your fingers - where?

--

authors postscript: thats right, got a spirit insect, butt.

Master Shoushan Zhi asked master Nian, "What is the meaning of Deshan's cane and Linji's shout?" Nian said, "You try to say." Zhi immediately shouted; Nian picked up a cane. Zhi pointed to the cane and said, "Don't act at random." Nian threw down the cane and said, "Someone with clear eyes is impossible to fool." Zhi said, "The brigand is busted."

A monk asked, "What was the purpose of the founding teacher's coming from the West?"

The master said, "A three-foot staff breaking an earthenware bowl."

"What is Buddha?"

"The bottom of a bucket falling out."

"What statement have the sages since time immemorial had?"

"'Thus have I heard.'"

"I don't understand."

"'Believing, accepting, putting into practice.'"

---

I like the initial conversation between Zhi and Nian. Demonstrated insight. I think "don't act at random" could've thrown a lot of Zen Masters if they were bein' honest.

The monk asked, what's the deal with Bodhidharma? The master said, it's like a three foot staff breaking an earthenware bowl. And how about Buddha? The bottom of a bucket falling out.

Capacity for holding is diminished. It isn't that "holding" is inherently wrong, it's moreso a consequence of Bodhidharma and Buddha according to the Zen lineage -- what's there to hold onto? Doctrinally, spiritually, religiously, philosophically, nothing survives the crack of the stick.

It isn't that people who are "full up" are any less endowed with the Buddha nature, just that they as a consequence may be more involved in their personal storylines and follow out their thoughts to conclude that they are the thinker. Huangbo put it like people walking around with a jewel on their foreheads, looking for the jewel. Nonetheless, Buddhas. That ordinariness is alive and ripe, these are people living, not caught up in nests like Zen and the Way. There they've got the leg up on dumbass me.

Treasury #522:

When the fifth patriarch was in Chang'an lecturing on the Flower Ornament scripture, a monk came and asked, "What is the meaning of the conditional arising of the nature of reality?" The patriarch was silent. Chan master Anguo Ting was standing by in attendance at the time; he said, "Great worthy, right when you produce a single thought this is conditional arising in the nature of reality." That monk was greatly enlightened at these words.

---

Bucket/bowl busted.

---

And then we get to the next part.

"What statement have the sages since time immemorial had?"

"'Thus have I heard.'"

"I don't understand."

"'Believing, accepting, putting into practice.'"

Zhi and Nian were not sages since time immemorial. Believing, accepting, putting into practice, these are things to fill a bucket with. "Thus have I heard" is not the Way.

---

What sticks along near the bucket-hole is subtle. That's why it's good to converse with clear-eyed individuals. Go ahead, clean my clock.

Karl doesn’t hide behind justification, performance, or rage.

Doyle is always talking... posturing, dominating rooms, inflating himself through noise. Karl arrives already emptied out. No speech. No theatrics. No moral courtroom. Just direct seeing and direct action.

“What are you doing with that lawnmower blade?”
“I aim to kill you with it.”

That line lands so hard because there’s no ego decoration around it. No villain monologue. No “you made me do this.” No attempt to appear righteous.

Zen stories often have that same shocking plainness.

a monk asks a question,
the master cuts the cat,
breaks the bowl,
slams the door,
or says one sentence that leaves nowhere to hide.

Karl is almost koan-like throughout the whole film:

he speaks only when needed,

sees hypocrisy immediately,

doesn’t intellectualize morality,

and acts from a primitive, uncomfortable clarity.

The scene works because Doyle cannot even perceive the seriousness of the moment. Ego thinks everything is still social theater. Karl has already stepped outside the theater.

Doyle is still trapped in self-image.
Karl, for one awful instant, becomes pure function.

No hesitation.
No self-explanation.

That’s why the scene feels less like revenge and more like fate arriving quietly at the door.

I aim to kill you with it.

I'm not sure what's important and what's not, but it seemed relevant to me that perhaps ar zen, which seemed to me so much larger than ar zenbuddhism, actually has nearly the same number of weekly visitors. Sometimes we can be deceived by certain things.

Does it matter what subreddits are more popular? To me it seemed valid to post here - because some people would see it. I do miss a place that is for essays or discussion that isn't the two big ones.

we live in a dwelling and are allowed to plant shrubs along the foundation.

one of the shrubs flowers a lot.

the significant other is concerned that it attracts too many bees.

the worry is someone might get stung.

so we are waiting for someone to come give an estimate on digging it out, and moving it elsewhere from the walkway.

-----

shrub just a shrub,

bee just a bee,

fear of stingers, realness,

plans.

------

postscript: ordinary life?