No start beep. No route to follow, no watts to chase, no heart rate to watch. Just me, the bike, and the road.
The first few minutes? Strange. It felt like riding without a license, without witnesses, without a point (which was probably the point).
Then I started breathing better. I looked at trees instead of the screen of my Garmin. I felt the body, not the numbers.
As the wheels rolled gently over familiar roads, I remembered Case 3 from the Mumonkan—Gutei’s Finger.
A young monk asks Master Gutei: “What is the Way?”
Gutei lifts a finger. That’s it.
The gesture hits the monk like lightning. He thinks he gets it.
So from then on, whenever anyone asks him about Zen or Gutei’s teachings—bam! He raises a finger.
When Gutei finds out, he cuts the monk’s finger off.
The boy screams. Gutei calls him. The monk turns instinctively—and in that moment, without a finger, he truly sees.
What’s the lesson? Don’t copy. Don’t cling to symbols.
The gesture is not the truth.
The map is not the territory.
A photo of pizza won’t feed you.
And a Garmin is not the ride.
Today, without data, I found a truer rhythm. No rush, no proving, no chasing. Just bends, tiny climbs, wind, and silence.
The road didn’t ask anything of me. And I asked nothing of it.
I came home sweaty, happy. No KOMs, no averages to check—just a simple truth:
You don’t need to know where you are to really be there.
And the finger? Mine’s still firmly attached. For now.
Zen Mindfulness Cambridge Zenways Italia 