Chao Chou asked Nanchuan, “What is the Tao (Way)?”

Nanchuan replied, “Ordinary mind is the Tao.”

“Ordinary” simply means that the Tao is ever-present, in everyone and everything, without exception. Yet few realize it, and those who do usually go though considerable time and effort to do so. Thus it’s also extra-ordinary — so ordinary and close that’s it’s difficult to see.

Chao Chou continued, “How can I direct myself towards it?”

Nanchuan replied, “If you try to direct yourself towards it, you turn away from it.”

Chao Chou said, “If I don’t direct myself towards it, how will I ever know it?”

Nanchuan said, “The Tao is not about knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion, not-knowing is blankness. If you actually realize the true Tao, you’ll find it vast and boundless like empty space. How can it be a matter of right or wrong.”

With that Chao Chou had his first enlightenment. Although he was still young, probably in his early twenties, he’d already been training at Nanchuan’s monastery for several years.

Nanchuan is often faulted in this case for being too “grandmotherly.” Many masters would have just driven Chao Chou away with their staff at such questioning.

This koan, or “public case,” is number nineteen in the famous collection compiled by the 13th century Chinese Master, Mumon Ekai, who by some accounts was a long-haired layman. The Mumonkan koan collection is used to train monks in both the ancient Rinzai sect, and in the more recent Sanbo Kyodan, a non-monastic lay school of zen popular in the West.

Mumon caps this koan with a verse —

Flowers in springtime, a moon in autumn,

A breeze in summer and snow in winter;

If your mind is clear of vain concerns,

For you it is the perfect season.

It’s said that a Buddha is just someone “with no concerns.”

How do you get to a place of no concerns? As Nanchuan said, If you actually realize the true Tao, you’ll find it vast and boundless like empty space. Thoughts, self, and all phenomena become transparent and empty, and can be seen right through. Everything is resolved. All is forgiven.

Mumon comments that “Although Chao Chou had a realization, he wouldn’t really get it for another thirty years of practice.” Indeed, he would train with Nanchuan until his old master died when Chao Chou was almost sixty. Then he spent the next twenty years wandering from place to place, testing and deepening his enlightenment. When he set out on his pilgrimage he vowed that if he met a hundred year old who needed guidance he would teach that venerable person, and if he met a seven year old he could learn from he’d become a disciple of that child. He finally settled down in a small temple at the age of eighty and embarked on a teaching career that lasted another forty years until he died at the age of one hundred and twenty. He is the source of many koan, the most famous being “mu,” an answer he gave to the question of whether or not a dog has Buddha Nature.