June 2021

Dear Friends,

There is a famous kong-an about two monks that were walking with their heads looking downward, each absorbed in their own limited view, walking straight towards each other, nearly crashing together. This story always reminds me of my grandfather, an impoverished Jewish immigrant from Russia. He always walked with his head down, scanning the ground for a dropped penny, a lost comb or any kind of mislaid valuable that he might claim. He had lost so much in his lifetime that he lived from morning to night, day after day, looking to the ground for something to fill the great void in his heart.

And yet all the while he had a family—a wife and six daughters—a bountiful treasure that he didn’t see. A whole world that he didn’t see.

We say, in Zen, that just seeing is Buddha Nature. But what is to be seen? And how are we to see it? First, let us widen the view to a spacious awareness, and then we can feast our eyes on the 10,000 things as they appear and disappear. Always, a feast.

We can take my grandfather’s myopic view as a cautionary tale, a kong-an that reminds us to look up, no matter how dire our circumstances might be. The world we are about to enter does not yet exist. Look up. There it is! It’s obvious. 

Yours in the great panoramic landscape of the dharma,

Jeong Ji