Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘My teacher Genyu Kojima Roshi… has never once complimented me. Not once. Many times he has given feedback, sometimes sharp, always direct, and yet never a compliment.

At first, I was frustrated. And yet over time I realized what a gift this is. He is giving zero food to my small, hungry creature that asks, ‘Am I good? Do you think I’m good?’ For me, this is the true gift of a teacher—to fearlessly point to our Buddha nature.

Many of us want this kind of validation. I was speaking recently with a student who was struggling with koan practice. They felt they had to ‘perform’ something for me, their teacher. And yet koans are not interested in performance.

To me, that is the great danger: the deadness of our small-mindedness. Practice, whether koan study or counting the breath, is not about getting it right. It is about being alive.

Dogen Zenji and Keizan Zenji both loved the teaching that zazen should be practiced like a fool, like an idiot.When I first heard that, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to feel like that.’

And yet it’s not about pretending to be foolish. It’s about realizing: I don’t know most things. I don’t even really know what I’m thinking half the time. Never mind what is happening in the entire cosmos.

‘Like a fool, like an idiot’ is the posture of humility and openness that invites the absolute into our lives. It is not self-deprecation; it’s liberation.

Keizan says, “It is as high as a mountain, deep as the ocean, without peak or depths. Its brilliance is unthinkable. It shows itself silently.”’ (from Slow Down. Help Out. Wake Up.)