Zen Stories: 10 Gates Of Awakening

Zen is something that is not a thing, so it’s hard to talk about. Rather, it is a certain feeling. Stories have been used for thousands of years to help provide the feeling. They’re like the experience of a joke, and here the punchline is the feeling of enlightenment.

In this course, I present a collection of 10 Zen stories, each just a few minutes long, some ancient and some from my own experience at a Zen monastery.

Time to wake up.

Leçon 1: The Empty Cup

Here is a famous story related to what you might call Beginner’s Mind. In order to grasp the meaning of Zen, which cannot be grasped, you must be willing to empty your mind of what it’s already full of.

Leçon 2: Moon Water

This story presents a classic visual metaphor for the enlightened mind. This is the first example of a mōndo in this course, which is a dialogue between a teacher and a student. You are both the teacher and the student.

Leçon 3: Mind Moves

Here’s my son’s favorite of the classic Zen stories (he’s 4, and he’ll request “the one about the flag” sometimes). This one touches on relativity and the implicit distinctions made by the thinking mind. What is behind all these distinctions?

Leçon 4: Kimpu's Lesson

Here’s a story from my own experience at a Zen monastery, Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-Ji in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. In the story, I have a brief and seemingly simple interaction with a resident monk, Kimpu, that changed my mind forever.

Leçon 5: Show Me Your Mind

This story references a classic Zen figure, Bodhidharma, the originator of Zen Buddhism, which was created when this figure moved from India to China. In this way, Zen Buddhism is at least as much Chinese as it is Indian.

Leçon 6: Why?

We experience another story in reference to old Bodhidharma, that trickster. This one articulates a question used in Zen throughout the ages: “Why did Bodhidharma move from India to China?” The teacher always responds to the student’s question unexpectedly. And that’s the answer.

Leçon 7: The Mind Thief

Here’s another one of my son’s favorites. It’s full of symbolism, playfulness, weirdness, and beauty. In this one, we encounter Ryokan, an old Zen master living in a small hut at the foot of a mountain. And he meets a thief. Let’s see what happens.

Leçon 8: A True Word

Here’s another story from my own experience at a Zen monastery. In this one, the main teacher (the roshi) asked us a question out of nowhere following a meal. These unexpected questions are great opportunities for awakening.

Leçon 9: The Background

In this one, we have an old mōndo between a teacher and student looking out at the ocean. A snapshot of nature witnessed directly always offers the whole truth encapsulated in all of Zen Buddhism. What is behind what’s looking?

Leçon 10: The Final Answer

Here we come to the deepest answer provided by the school of Zen as it relates to how to live a Zen life. It is deep but not complicated. In fact, it might just be too simple for the thinking mind to grasp. And so we return to the empty cup.