Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, “What is the main point of this holy teaching?” “Vast emptiness, nothing holy,” said Bodhidharma. “Who are you, standing in front of me?” asked the emperor. “I do not know,” said Bodhidharma.

You don’t even have to go looking for a koan, since there’s no way to find it. It will find you.

Eventually we find our song and remember it and sing it. And we can never know who else will sing the song, or how the story will turn out in the end; its ripples widen beyond us and there is no end in sight.

We take our minds for granted, imagining that they will behave themselves, but they don’t. It can’t be assumed that we will think what we intend to think, and we don’t always do what we tell ourselves to do. We might believe that we are our thoughts and feelings, but our thoughts and feelings are objects in the world, just like tables and mirrors.

We can’t say that human lives have a purpose, since a purpose would be smaller than we are. It’s true though, that the impulse to give freely to the world seems to be at the bottom of the well of human intentions where the purest and clearest water arises. To be able to offer back what the world has given you, but shaped a little by your touch—that

Most of the time there is a gap between the life we know is possible and the one we live. That gap appears as restlessness, pain, longing, fear, irredeemable loneliness, your skin crawling—some uncomfortable state.

As I see it, the world arrives out of what is unknown and unimagined. Everything just appears as it is, coming toward us; it is a gift, not a product, and it stumbles over us, crashes into us, or comes to fetch us. I suppose it helps to show up without much going on in our minds. That’s the discipline—the bit about not having much going on in our m

So where does wholeness come from? Well that’s one of the great questions. Where do we come from? Where does the universe come from?

It might be possible to find our song, our course of action, ourselves, in any situation. This finding wouldn’t depend on preset moves—it could be the wrong move that will save us.