Exploring Zen with Eno and Shinzan Roshi
The story of Eno, or Huineng, begins in a very ordinary way.
He was a poor, illiterate man from the south of China who made a living gathering and selling firewood.
One day, while delivering firewood, he heard someone reciting a line from the Diamond Sutra:
“Abide nowhere and let the mind come forth.”
Something happened.
We can call it insight.
We can call it awakening.
We can call it kenshō.
But whatever word we choose comes afterwards.
Eno heard a sentence.
And something shifted.
What I find interesting is that this didn’t happen after years of study in a monastery.
Eno wasn’t sitting in meditation.
He wasn’t attending a retreat.
He wasn’t even looking for enlightenment.
He was delivering firewood.
An ordinary activity in an ordinary life.
And yet that moment changed the direction of his life.
Seeing Clearly
Shinzan Roshi often talks about kenshō as seeing into our true nature.
This can sound like something dramatic or mysterious.
Perhaps we imagine a special state of consciousness, a flash of light, or some extraordinary experience that permanently changes everything.
But practice is often much less spectacular.
We sit and notice a thought.
We notice irritation.
Fear.
Desire.
A story about ourselves.
And sometimes, rather than immediately following it, defending it or trying to get rid of it, we simply see it.
It arises.
It changes.
It passes.
Then something else appears.
Perhaps seeing clearly doesn’t always need to look extraordinary.
Ordinary Life
This is one of the things I find interesting about Eno’s story.
His journey begins in ordinary life.
With work.
With firewood.
With hearing a few words while going about his day.
And perhaps this is worth remembering when we think about our own practice.
It is easy to divide life into practice and everything else.
Meditation is practice.
A retreat is practice.
A Dharma talk is practice.
But what about washing the dishes?
Walking down the street?
Working?
Listening to someone?
Feeling irritated because something hasn’t gone the way we wanted?
These moments may not look particularly spiritual.
But they are where most of our lives actually happen.
Shinzan Roshi often reminds us that practice doesn’t end when we get up from the cushion.
What happens there has to meet our ordinary life.
Otherwise Zen risks becoming something we do for a while before returning to the “real world.”
But the real world is already here.
What Happens When Something Loosens?
During the session, I asked two questions:
- What ideas about yourself do you tend to hold most tightly?
- Have there been ordinary moments where something loosened, where you simply flowed with life without trying to fix it?
I think the second question is particularly interesting.
Not necessarily the great spiritual experiences.
Not the moments we would put in a book about Zen.
Perhaps something much smaller.
Walking.
Cooking.
Cycling.
Listening to music.
Talking with someone.
Doing a piece of work.
A moment when, briefly, there wasn’t so much effort to make experience different from what it was.
Eno was carrying firewood.
Someone recited a line from a sutra.
He heard it.
Something shifted.
And then his life continued—
but not quite in the same direction.
