Tonight, I want to talk about Case 3 of the Mumonkan which is about a Zen master called Gutei and his attendant. Let me read it to you to start with….
So, the peculiarity of Gutei’s teaching was that whenever he was asked a question on Zen, he would simply raise one finger. That’s it. No explanation, no commentary. Just raising his finger.
His attendant, at some point began imitating this gesture. When asked about Zen, when asked what Gutei taught, the boy too would raise one finger…. Gutei gets to hear about this, he calls the boy over and cuts off his finger, harsh! The attendant is about to leave, most likely in pain, possibly very confused and even scared, I guess. He hears Gutei calling him, the attendant turns around and sees Gutei raising his own finger, once again. In that moment, it seems that the boy attendant was enlightened. He must have experienced deep insight.
Wow, let’s reflect for a moment on this. What’s really going on here? Does it not sound cruel? A child imitates a master and gets his finger chopped off? In these days, Gutei might be on trial. But in Zen, these stories are never meant to be taken literally. Instead, they are meant to cut through layers of interpretation, to strip away the conditionings which still stand between us and reality.
When asked a question, Gutei didn’t get into any kind of explanation. He simply raised a finger—his whole being in that moment, total presence, total response. That finger contained everything. Lacking nothing. No self-consciousness. No second thoughts. No gap between life and response. No separation. The boy saw this, but he only copied the form. So, what is this story telling us? Can we really copy someone? Can a moment, an instant, someone’s action be replicated?
I recently happened to do some long solo cycling rides in the early hours of the morning and reflected/worked/practised with this koan. I guess that everyone has experienced thinking of Zen as something to understand. Something to be grasped, maybe even achieved. Have you ever caught yourself saying “I got it now, I have achieved Zen,”. Perhaps imitating or replicating something we heard or read. I have, many times. I think that cycling has somehow helped me see how there is no Zen to be achieved, that there is no Zen even. Achieving something, making something out of a thing is separation, it is dual. Where is the separation between the uphill, the sweat, the cold, the breathing, the chain of my bike? Where does that separation happen? Is that real separation?
In the koan, Gutei doesn’t explain. He doesn’t teach with words. The boy imitates the gesture, but misses the essence. Gutei wants to shock him so he cuts his finger, he cuts through the imitation. When the boy turns around and sees Gutei raising his finger again, I guess he finally sees. Not a finger. Not an answer. Perhaps He sees what can’t be said? The completeness, the uniqueness of each moment as it is, lacking nothing, even he now had 9 fingers instead of 10? Still that moment was as complete as any other moment, full, unique, complete.
Gutei’s finger, to me, is like the act of cycling or breathing or sweating. I can explain it all I want, I can get into talking about the bike geometry, the cadence, the power, the tiredness, the joy, but …..the raw experience is just in the doing. It’s not a theory, it’s not an imitation. It’s not even a state of mind. It’s what’s already happening, when nothing is added, nothing taken away. When I don’t try, somehow.
The boy imitated Gutei’s finger. I am sure it looked the same—but it was just an imitation.
That’s a danger I realise I face, possibly we all face in life, in our practice. We might want to imitate. We have a full curriculum of famous phrases we might want to use: “just this,” “don’t know mind,” “mu,” “no-self.” We sit in a certain way, we speak in a certain way, we think we’ve understood something.
The boy thought he understood Gutei. After all, he’d seen it hundreds of times. He could lift the finger just like his master. He might have thought that was the essence of the teaching. But something essential was missing. He was not himself; he was trying hard to be like someone else, he wanted to replicate a moment that he saw, he experienced and, we just can’t do that.
I guess that somehow, cycling has given me that, it has trained me. The cold mornings. The long rides. The joy of a climb, the honesty of fatigue, the seeming solitude. These moments strip away illusion. My experience is that I can’t imitate the previous ride, the previous meter, another cyclist, warm temperature when it is cold, a descent when the road goes uphill. Moment to moment, I am exactly where I am. If I resist, if I try, if I avoid, it gets harder. If I accept…. something opens.
Gutei saw the danger and cut through the boy’s attachment to the form, literally. The boy was getting attached to the form, to an idea he had, not to the living truth it was trying to express. So Gutei ….. He cut off the boy’s finger. He destroyed the illusion.
Of course, in our practice, we don’t need to cut fingers off. But metaphorically, the practice of Zen asks us to give up parts of ourselves we cling to. Our ideas of practice. Our spiritual identities. Our narratives, in general.
Think of the things we repeat, the patterns we imitate in our life or in our Zen practice. How do we chant? How do we sit? How do we speak? How do we breath? Are we here? 100%?
Our practices comes to live only when we stop copying and start living.
So how do we practice this?
Responding fully and immediately, without self-consciousness. Trusting that awakening isn’t in the words, in the thinking, in the trying but in the actual living experience.
The practice isn’t about complexity. Gutei’s one finger is the simplest thing in the world. But because we want understanding, overthinking, explanations —we miss it.
Can we allow ourselves to be that direct?
Of course, our directness won’t be the same as Gutei’s and that is the point. Maybe it’s silence. Maybe it’s a breath. Maybe it’s a smile.
How do we respond to the world right now?
Like a Zen koan, cycling offers no final answer. But it invites presence. I can’t ride tomorrow’s ride today. I can’t climb the next hill while still descending. There is only this turn, this moment.
When Gutei raised his finger, he wasn’t giving an answer. He was giving a mirror. A way to see that there’s nothing to seek, because nothing is missing. And yet, that’s the hardest thing to see. We all want to know. To grasp. To be sure.
The Buddha did teach in a very similar way when he held up a flower before his disciples. He said nothing. Everyone was silent—except for Mahākāśyapa, who simply smiled. In that smile, Buddha saw complete understanding, genuine authentic response. The other people were scratching their heads trying to understand, trying to work it out. Perhaps a few tried to imitate the gesture like Gutei’s attendant. As we know, that moment marked the beginning of Zen: direct, wordless transmission of insight. Nothing was said and yet everything was revealed—truth, reality beyond any doctrine.
There’s a teaching in Zen: “When walking, just walk. When eating, just eat.” I would add: when riding, just ride and when doing something, just, simply do what you are doing.
Thanks for listening!
Zen Mindfulness Cambridge Zenways Italia 