The with condition is what, in an unexamined way, you believe to be true. Beliefs have consequences; they build their own fictional world. When you believe something, you usually want the world to agree with you, to back up your story. Of course it rarely does, so your story will come with conflict built into its plotline. In the without condition,

I saw then that this is one of those embarrassing stories in which the storyteller unconsciously describes his own mind. I thought the koan was boring, but I hadn’t let it all the way in. I thought the koan was lazy, but no, that was also me. And I had convinced a few of my colleagues as well. It’s really nice to have your delusions exploded; it’s

Can you find where this moment comes from or where it goes home to?

Before dawn the next morning I heard my father’s voice come through the answering machine. “Mum died, John. That’s all I have to say. Bye.” I felt a love for him and also felt that my mother had indeed said farewell in a completely satisfactory way.

It was like the fellow who lost his car keys in the dark alley but was looking for them under the streetlight. “There’s more light here,” he explained. I hoped that if I sat very, very still and didn’t have thoughts, then lightning would strike. Tricky.

When my mother’s ashes came back from the crematorium, my family spent a couple of days staring at the plastic box that held them. Then we took the box to the old cast iron bridge across the Tamar River. Both bridge and river had been continual companions to her life. I undid a surprising number of layers and poured the ashes into the water below.

It was simple, I stopped knowing what I couldn’t do or live up to.”

Koans light up a life that may have been dormant in you; they hold out the possibility of transformation even if you are trying to address unclear or apparently insoluble problems.

It’s not a discipline or a good thing