In the koan, Case 48 of the Wumen-kuan collection of koans, a monk asks Kan-feng, “the exalted saints of the ten directions have one straight road to nirvana: I wonder where that road is.” Kan- feng lifted up his staff and drew a line in the air and said, “here it is”. The koan continues from here, however this initial dialogue is quite instructive. We normally come to zen with a sense of spiritual enquiry often because we feel something is incomplete. We sense something is lacking, we don’t feel quite fulfilled, so we begin the journey of spiritual exploration. We have a sense that there must be something more than this tumultuous world and life that often feels unsatisfying. One of the mistakes that we can make is to think that, to find that sense of joy and completeness, it must be some place else. We think that it can’t be here, in this place of dissatisfaction or suffering. Sometimes people will travel to other countries to sit with a great zen master. Surely, they will find nirvana there, where they will be joyous and complete. Sometimes we feel like we are running from what feels unpleasant, nirvana can’t be here surely.

When Kan-feng lifted his staff and drew a line, and said, “here it is”, he is presenting the road to nirvana, to joy and completeness, right here. The very thing that we seek, is nowhere else but right here. It is right here that we must look. Within whatever it is that we are experiencing in our lives, including the incompleteness and unsatisfactoriness. When we think and believe it is someplace else, we are lost in the imagination. It only exists in our minds. It is hard to believe that the very thing we seek is right here in this unsatisfactoriness, in this incompleteness, but this is where we must look. When we do experience completeness, we realise that it excludes nothing. After all, how could completeness exclude anything? It wouldn’t be completeness otherwise.

These Encouraging Words, by apprentice teacher Will Moon, appear in the April May 2025 Newsletter