The Dry Shit Stick

—after Case 21: Ummon’s Kanshiketsu

It happened twenty kilometers from home, climbing a narrow road. I was deep in rhythm. Each breath matched each turn. The mind silent.

Then it hit: a mechanical, unexpected. Not dramatic—just annoying. A snapped chain which meant grease everywhere. No more clean cloth. I knelt, hands black, muttering, swearing even.

I’d been feeling close to something nice. And now, this?

I laughed. There it was.

The Buddha I had been pedalling toward wasn’t waiting at the summit. He was in the snapped chain, in the grease. In the swear words. In the stone I sat on while pondering what to do.

When a monk asked Ummon, “What is the Buddha?”
He didn’t say “mind.”
He didn’t say “true nature.”
He said: “A dry shit stick.”

The tool that cleans excrement. Every day, filthy, necessary. No metaphor. No polish. Just the truth, raw and immediate.

I wiped my hands on a roadside weed, pulled my phone and called Uber.

The Buddha was never missing.

He was now under my nails.