Keizan’s teaching points to what is already here: the mind before content. This is a rough transcript of a December 2025 Zenways Sangha talk, inviting recognition beyond effort or attainment.
It’s been three weeks since the Sesshin we had in November. During that retreat, we spent some time studying Keizan, and when I got home I felt inspired to pick up his book Transmission of the Light with fresh eyes.
Keizan was a Japanese Zen master who lived in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. In terms of lineage, he can be considered a grandchild of Dōgen. In Transmission of the Light, he recounts 53 stories of transmission — from the Buddha through the ancestors — ending with Ejō, Dōgen’s immediate successor, who came right before Keizan himself.
“Zen certainly values scriptures and formal teaching, but its real power lies in direct mind-to-mind transmission — the living recognition of awakening between teacher and student.” In other words: “Zen uses scriptures, but doesn’t depend on them; it points past them, to direct mind-to-mind transmission.”
Of course, this is nothing mystical — it’s very plain. Awakening isn’t passed on through words, ideas, doctrines, or accumulation of knowledge. It’s recognised directly in lived experience — one awakened mind meeting another, nothing added, nothing taken away.
When I say “awakened mind,” I don’t mean some mystical or transcendent state. I mean the mind that’s aware of itself — the clarity that notices experiences directly, without getting lost in thoughts or caught up in judgements. It is the same awareness the ancestors recognised in each other, and that, very importantly, we can recognise in ourselves.
When reading the book, I came across the tenth story of transmission, to Punyamitra — specifically the exchange he had with the ancestor before him, Buddhanandi, who told him:
“You are more akin to mind than to your parents, incomparably more akin.”
What is this pointing to? Well, in the relative and conventional way of understanding things, we descend from our parents; we are the natural continuation of them. However, ultimately — in the absolute dimension — we are simply manifestations of this unifying reality which comes before parents, words, descriptions, thoughts, ideas… Our truest intimacy is not outside us: not in parents, not in external forms, scriptures, chanting, Buddhas. It is realised when the mind recognises itself directly.
This brings us to our own lives. How often do we live inside the story of the mind — absorbed in a tight and fixed identification with its content, forgetting the clarity that is already here before the content? For me, it’s like being out on my bike and staring only at the numbers on the little computer while the road and the landscape unfold around me. Focusing on the content and forgetting to remain open to what is, moment by moment.
It’s said in the book that Punyamitra was enlightened on hearing Buddhanandi’s words: “You are more akin to mind than to your parents, incomparably more akin.”
I imagine he instantly recognised something that had always been true but unnoticed. Perhaps he realised that what he was seeking was already looking — simply obscured by the accumulation of mind-content.
And if we take that seriously, it changes the whole flavour of practice. Instead of trying to reach something, fix something, or acquire some special state, we simply return to what is already aware, already open, already present. That’s why the ancestors keep pointing back to this direct, intimate recognition: not as a philosophy, but as something you can notice right now — the mind before the content.
When we sit to meditate, we’re often instructed to allow things to arise and pass. But how do we do that? Where do we anchor ourselves as we allow things to arise and pass?
We don’t anchor in thoughts, or in the breath as an object, or in the body as a fixed point. What we anchor in is this simple knowing — the awareness that is already here before anything appears. The mind that is aware of thoughts as thoughts, sensations as sensations, sounds as sounds. This is the “mind before the content.” It has no shape, no story, no age or history. But it is the most intimate thing in our lives.
And when we rest there — even briefly — suddenly thoughts have room to move. Sensations can be felt without resistance. Emotions can appear without becoming our identity. We discover that letting things arise and pass isn’t something we do through effort; it’s what naturally happens when we’re not clinging to the content. The clarity was already doing its job.
This is why Buddhanandi’s sentence is so powerful. It cuts straight through the usual places where we look for identity — parents, history, personality — and points to something more fundamental. Something that doesn’t come and go. Something that has always been available, whether we noticed it or not.
And if we trust that, practice becomes much simpler. Sitting is no longer about achieving calm or stopping the mind. It becomes more like remembering to look up from the content. The sky, the breath, the awareness — they were always there. We just weren’t looking.
So when we sit, we can gently ask ourselves:
What is aware of this breath?
What is aware of this thought?
What is aware of this sound?
Not looking for an answer in words, but resting in the noticing itself.
This is the intimacy the ancestors are pointing to — an intimacy more fundamental than family, more fundamental than history, more fundamental even than the sense of “I.” An intimacy that doesn’t need to be created — only recognised.
And the benefit of this kind of recognition? It’s not abstract at all. When we become familiar with the mind before the content, something very practical begins to shift. We stop getting pushed around quite so much by thoughts and moods. We find a little more space, a little more humour, a little more freedom in the midst of our everyday lives. Reactivity loosens; compassion comes more naturally; decisions become less tangled because we’re no longer operating entirely from habit and conditioning. It’s as if the centre of gravity moves from the storm to the sky. The weather still comes and goes — busy days, difficult emotions, frustrations, joy — but all of it unfolds within a wider, clearer space. And that clarity isn’t fragile; it doesn’t need protecting. It’s simply recognised. And once recognised, it can quietly support everything we do.
There is a koan you’ve probably heard:
“What is your original face before your parents were born?”
As with all koans, it’s not a riddle to be solved, but an invitation to look directly:
before the stories, before the roles, before the endless stream of thought —
what is it that is already here?
The ancestors called it mind-to-mind transmission.
But really, it’s just this simple recognition:
the mind knowing itself.
Closer than parents, closer than any teaching,
never apart from us, even for a moment.
The invitation is simply to turn toward that quiet clarity,
and let it reveal itself.
Thanks for listening
Zen Mindfulness Cambridge Zenways Italia 