331 - When Confronted with Great Difficulties: Zhaozhou's "Just Right"

How can we practice without ignoring the world, but also without being overwhelmed by it? We can learn something from a koan involving the 9^th century Chan master Zhaozhou (Joshu): A monk asked, “When a great difficulties come, how should I avoid them?” Zhaozhou said, “Just right.” We can include great difficulties in our perception of this life without being destroyed by them, letting our hearts break without rejecting this world or becoming consumed by anger or grief.

Practicing the Dharma in a World Full of Great Difficulties
Zhaozhou’s Advice About Facing Great Calamity
Our Human Reactions to Great Difficulties
The Practice of “Just Right”

Practicing the Dharma in a World Full of Great Difficulties

In my Zen community, Bright Way Zen, we have started reciting this verse before our talks and classes:

We gather in Sangha to practice and study the Dharma to sustain ourselves spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Let us call to mind all those who are suffering in this world as we enjoy this moment of peace. [Several second of silence.] May our practice give us strength, compassion, and equanimity as we enact our bodhisattva vows to free all beings.

I don’t know about you, but I experience significant cognitive dissonance when I get absorbed in Dharma practice and study while there is so much suffering in the world. While I appreciate the profound and liberative nature of the Dharma, while I am taking refuge with the Sangha, am I being selfish? Am I turning away from my bodhisattva intentions to act as if I’m in the same boat with all living beings? Am I engaged in spiritual bypassing, where we use so-called “spiritual” methods to avoid having to experience pain or deal with our karma? Am I running away from the feelings of dread, fear, and responsibility that arise when I observe the troubled world? Am I trying to avoid problems and pain within my own personal life?

I believe these are important questions for Dharma practitioners to ask themselves. Not just once. Repeatedly.

If we use the Dharma simply for our own comfort and turn away from the suffering in the world or in our own lives, we not only forsake our bodhisattva vows, we diminish our spiritual practice. Whatever peace of mind or profound insight we cultivate, it remains fragile. The fruits of our practice are constrained to circumstances where we are undisturbed by suffering. We live with fear that if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, our practice will be lost just when we need it the most.

Zhaozhou’s Advice About Facing Great Calamity

How can we practice without ignoring the world, but also without being overwhelmed by it? We can learn something from a koan involving the 9^th century Chan master Zhaozhou (Jow-joe; Joshu in Japanese; this translation by Tony Chen):

A monk asked, “When a great calamity comes, how should I evade it?”

Jōshū said, “It is just right.”[i]

The monk here isn’t asking a practical question about how to literally avoid difficulty – how manage your life so you never suffer pain or misfortune, or how to organize the world so there’s no injustice, strife, and destruction in it. Those are very important matters to contemplate, of course, but they are not the concern of Zen. Our Dharma practice almost never provides us with practical answers when we have important decisions to make, but it does help us cultivate the best possible state of mind and heart for making good decisions.

Through Dharma practice we are hoping to find a way to live so whatever comes doesn’t feel like a great difficulty. We want to attain a perspective, master a way of being, which will allow us to remain relatively calm, centered, and strong no matter what happens. We want to be someone who isn’t bothered, so we can respond to great difficulties in a wise, compassionate, and skillful way.

When trying to connect with a teaching, especially one that has been translated, it’s sometimes helpful to explore the words used. This exploration doesn’t have to be a merely intellectual exercise. Instead, it can shine a light on your relationship to the teaching as you notice what arises in you in response to different words. Let’s look at the two Chinese characters that make up Zhaozhou’s response:

恰 qià is defined by the MDBG free online Chinese to English dictionary as “just, exactly, precisely; proper”

好 hǎo is defined on the MDBG site as “good / appropriate; proper / all right!”

When I entered both characters together into the MDBG dictionary, it offered this: “as it turns out / by lucky coincidence / (of number, time, size etc) just right”

I’m no scholar and can’t read Chinese, and this is a modern Chinese-to-English dictionary while Zhaozhou lived in medieval China, but getting even this much insight into the words used in the original exchange I find very interesting. When great difficulties come, we avoid the experience of great difficulty by turning to face the challenge and saying, “Just right!”

Our Human Reactions to Great Difficulties

What does it mean to respond, “just right” when confronted with great difficulties? Probably not what we think. We usually conclude that a true Dharma master is a different breed of being – someone who no longer cares about trouble or difficulty. We imagine that if we were enlightened, we might no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure. We’d have attained some transcendent perspective that would allow us to observe suffering and confusion – our own, or that of others – as unimportant, like the struggles of an ant watched by a human.

Instead, we find ourselves responding to great difficulty with resistance, anger, fear, anguish, anxiety, grief, aversion, and denial. Try as we might, we don’t feel calm and centered. We have to make decisions and take care of ourselves and others. Faced with pain and loss, we don’t experience it with indifference – at least, not without suppressing our emotions in a way that has negative consequences in the long run. We may have been blessed with profound moments in which the troubles of the world seemed distant, when the preciousness of this life seemed unadulterated by suffering, but when we witness the horrors of the world, our humanity calls us to respond with empathy and concern.

We weep to see the hope in a child’s eyes get snuffed out by oppressive circumstances, or natural beauty destroyed by greed. We feel outrage when we witness the abuse of others, and overwhelming grief when we lose loved ones. We experience stress when overworked or when facing difficult decisions. I think this manifestation of our basic humanity is what Zen master Dogen was referring to when he said, in “Genjokoan,” “flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them.”[ii]

The Practice of “Just Right”

Practice doesn’t transport us to a realm where we are indifferent to the beauty of flowers and blind to the negative impacts of weeds. The fruit of practice is more subtle than that, but also more profound and transformative: We remain fully human, fully engaged with the world, but also, somehow, more expansive. We can include great difficulties in our perception of this life without being destroyed by them. We can let our hearts break without rejecting this world or becoming consumed by anger or grief.

If we respond to great difficulties with Zhaozhou’s “just right,” what are we doing? It’s not that we suddenly want the difficulty, it’s not that we’re capitulating and accepting whatever pain or injustice comes our way without trying to change it. Instead, we’re acknowledging the situation. “As it turns out,” one of the dictionary entries for Zhaozhou’s two-character phrase says. Here we are. In this very moment, we give up our existential struggle to make things other than how they have ended up. In this moment, we are simply with the great difficulties, not separate from them or from all suffering beings.

Think of a time in your own experience when you were able to shift your attitude about something challenging, transforming your situation from one of anguish and stress into one of greater spaciousness and centeredness. Although your circumstances didn’t change – at least not immediately – you felt grounded in reality, liberated from unhelpful narratives, and better able to deal with what you were facing. What words would you use to describe that shift in attitude? Maybe “just right” sounds a bit too much like you should suddenly be happy about the difficulties you are facing. Maybe “OK” better corresponds to your attitude shift.

Personally, I like the phrase “this too” for representing what goes on in my heart-mind when I manage to face difficulty without being overwhelmed. I recall the unconditional preciousness of Reality-with-a-Capital-R and remind myself that Reality includes both the difficulty and my human reaction to it. The suchness of Reality doesn’t emanate from some separate, rarefied realm that exists separately from this world, where nothing bad exists. Suchness is not like that. If humanity destroys itself, it will be a great tragedy – a tragedy that takes place within the realm of Reality, not decreasing suchness one iota. Unless you have a taste of suchness for yourself, this is probably not going to make much sense to you, but it is so.

Zhaozhou’s “just right” is about showing up for your life, just as it is. You’re not going to get a different life. You may be able to change some things about your life in the future, but this takes hard work. Dreaming of future changes doesn’t help the state of your heart-mind here and now. When you practice Zhaozhou’s “just right,” it’s like meeting the circumstances of your life at the door and inviting them in. You may think that making great difficulties wait outside will spare you, that they will go away of themselves, but this almost never works. While they wait outside you remain imprisoned in the house of your own expectations and narratives, sneaking around and avoiding the windows so you can’t be spotted.

Once you open the door to your great difficulties, Zhaozhou’s “just right” involves an important measure of graciousness. Rather than grudgingly inviting in unwanted guests, trying to subtly communicate with yawns or fidgeting that you’d like them to leave as soon as possible, you say, “Ah, excellent, you arrive right now by lucky coincidence,” or “You’ve come at just the right time.” Whatever your personal preferences, you set them aside in order to respond in the most skillful way you can. Such graciousness also implies a certain confidence that you can handle whatever comes. Maybe you feel that confidence, or maybe you have to fake-it-til-you-make-it – in the end it doesn’t matter so much; responding with graciousness calms your mind and heart.

Remember, responding with “just right” is entirely about your own attitude. It says nothing whatsoever about whether the great difficulties you are facing are just, fair, legitimate, acceptable, pleasant, or workable. “Just right” is an existential shift that involves releasing your futile and exhausting resistance to how things have ended up. In the next moment you can work to change things, employing much greater wisdom and skillfulness than you would have had before graciously inviting your difficulties in for tea.

When we practice Zhaozhou’s “just right” when faced with difficulties, we get better at it over time. We can develop deep confidence that practice is as relevant in times of calamity as times of peace – perhaps even more so. We can recognize that spiritual peace and strength need not be conditional.