“… Whatever you imagine, whatever you taste, touch, smell, see, hear — that is nothing but Rinzai’s one true person of no rank …” ~ Henry Shukman
Rinzai instructed his assembly and said, “There is one true person of no rank, always coming out and going in through the gates of your face. Beginners who have not yet witnessed that, Look! Look!” Then a monk came out and asked, “What is the one true person of no rank?” Rinzai descended from the rostrum and grabbed him. The monk hesitated. Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank — what a shit-stick you are!”
Description: Henry speaks of his eldest son who is leaving for college. He expresses the pain and joy of letting go amidst this acute reminder of impermanence. He then turns to this week’s koan which comes from the heart of the Rinzai lineage, Rinzai’s True Person of No Rank. Henry encourages us to sit with this koan, which is directly about our experience right now. It looks at what is real, probes into what a person actually is, outside of conditioning. Zen wants us to take this “box of experience” and see it for what it really is, in order to discover who we really are, both inside and out. The great boundlessness of reality is both–both in and out, neither in nor out. Whatever you imagine, whatever you taste, touch, smell that is nothing but Rinzai’s one true person of no rank
Post and Featured image: Chestnut by Mhy, CCO Public Domain.