Matthew Kozan Palevsky: No Place Other than Yourself: Juzhi’s One Finger Zen – Fall Practice Period 2022 (8 of 11)

Sensei Matthew Kozan Palevsky continues Upaya’s exploration of the teachings of Hongzhi, looking at the text “Thirty Years of Emptiness and Existence,” in which Hongzhi references the koan, Juzhi’s One Finger. “No place can be other than myself,” Hongzhi writes, referencing the famous story of Juzhi and his realization that he is filled with all that he needs, overflowing in fact, and that he doesn’t need to go anywhere else or be anyone else to live as a Buddha. The frustration, though, that Juzhi and most of the rest of us experience, of feeling that we do not have what we need to meet reality, to meet ourselves, and that we need to look somewhere else to find it, is a part of the path, a fruit even, Kozan insists, of sincere practice. “The activity of investigating our lives always includes frustration.” And on the path of realizing that reality is nowhere other ourselves, we’ll need the help of friends, of teahers, of sangha. Juzhi didn’t believe that he was filled with Dharma and all he needed was someone to point it out for him, and then he overflowed with life, with wisdom and compassion.

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Upaya Podcast Series: SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD 2022: Cultivating the Empty Field