When Eno, or Huineng, arrived at the monastery of the Fifth Patriarch, Hongren asked him:
“Where are you from, and what do you seek?”
Eno replied:
“I am from Lingnan. I have come only to become a Buddha.”
Hongren looked at him and said:
“You are a jungle dog from the south. How can you possibly become a Buddha?”
It sounds harsh.
But Eno did not hesitate.
He replied:
“People may be from the north or the south, but how can their Buddha-nature differ?”
This first exchange already tells us something about Eno.
Hongren points towards all the things that apparently define him.
Where he comes from.
His background.
His status.
The assumptions other people make about someone like him.
Eno doesn’t deny any of this.
He is from the south.
He is poor and uneducated.
These things are part of his story.
But are they the whole story?
Where Are You From?
“Where are you from?” sounds like a very ordinary question.
Italy.
England.
Lingnan.
Cambridge.
A town.
A family.
A culture.
We can answer very easily.
But in Zen, an ordinary question has a habit of becoming slightly less ordinary if we stay with it long enough.
Where are you from?
Not where were you born.
Not where do you live.
Not what nationality are you.
Not what happened to you.
Where are you from?
Eno’s response to Hongren doesn’t reject the conventional answers.
North and south still exist.
Different people have different bodies, histories and circumstances.
But he refuses to allow those differences to settle the question of who he fundamentally is.
South or north.
Educated or uneducated.
Monk or layperson.
Successful or unsuccessful.
All of these descriptions may be true.
But what happens if, for a moment, we don’t stop there?
The Stories We Carry
Shinsan Roshi often reminds us how easily we create identities and then begin living inside them.
I am this kind of person.
I have always been like this.
People like me don’t do that.
This is what happened to me.
This is who I am.
Again, these stories are not necessarily false.
Our histories matter.
Our experiences shape us.
But practice gives us an opportunity to notice what happens when a description becomes something we have to protect.
Instead of polishing an identity into a better identity, Zen sometimes asks a much more uncomfortable question:
Who is carrying it?
Eno arrives at the monastery carrying an entire history.
Hongren sees the southerner.
The outsider.
The uneducated worker.
Eno doesn’t need to pretend that none of those things are true.
He simply doesn’t stop there.
Before North and South
So perhaps Eno’s story leaves us with something to investigate directly.
What are the stories you most strongly use to describe yourself?
Your work?
Your family?
Your nationality?
Your successes?
Your failures?
Your personality?
Your past?
And can you sense, even briefly, what is present before that story—
before your parents,
before north or south,
before success or failure?
Not as an idea.
Not as another description of yourself.
Just look.
Eno stands before Hongren.
A man from the south standing before a man from the north.
Different backgrounds.
Different lives.
Different roles.
And Hongren asks, in effect:
How can someone like you become Buddha?
Eno answers:
People may come from north or south.
But how can their true nature differ?
