Greetings!
It’s Leo season (how is it the over 50% of people I know are Leos?) I have had the joy of some travel over the past month—Mud Lotus Sangha did our first weeklong sesshin at Saranam Retreat Center in WV, I saw Bob Dylan in concert in Cincinnati and spent a few days on the Atlantic shore immersed in Ocean Mudra Samadhi.
I’m back in Ohio for a couple of weeks and then I will be heading to Great Vow Zen Monastery for a jukai ceremony and our Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin followed by a week of residency.
Today though I want to share a koan that has been a companion for these last few weeks. It’s Case 36 in the Hidden Lamp: The Old Woman, Joshu and the Tiger.
One day wehn Master Joshu was outside the monastery, he saw an old woman hoeing a field. He asked her, “What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?”
She replied, “Nothing in this world frightens me,” and turned back to her hoeing.
Joshu roared like a tiger. She roared back at him.
Joshu said, “There’s still this.”
One thing I love about koans like this is that they speak the language of awakening, right in the everyday activities of life.
Imagine weeding in your garden, and someone came up to you and said. What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?
What would you do?
So Joshu is a seasoned Zen teacher, and this old woman is seasoned in the wisdom of life and may also be a Zen master.
What is Joshu doing? Who is this tiger?
Is he talking about her? About himself? Another teacher with insight? Tigers can refer to a zen adapt/teacher who is wise, fierce—dangerous for the ego.
He also could be testing her. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with this fierce wilderness we call life/the world/spiritual path?
He is also talking to us. How do you stand with the wild unknown?
Nothing in this world frightens me. She says. She may also be saying, you don’t frighten me. I don’t frighten me.
Here is someone seasoned in the wisdom of life, loss, change. She has lived through the death of loved ones, famines, wars, times of abundance. She has been child, maiden, mother, sister, friend, elder.
And yet, she says, nothing in the world frightens me. That’s a powerful statement for anyone.
Feel into that for a moment. Try it on. Say the words. Nothing in the world frightens me.
Could that be true for you? Where do the words come from when you say them? What happens?
Is there a place in you that is fearless? That doesn’t suppress fear, but also isn’t afraid of it? Or does the statement invoke fear, call forward the things that are unsettled in your heart?
This koan invites us to study the dharma gate of fear. To truly study fear means we also study liberation, compassion, the refuge of the dharma, and everything else that is connected to fear.
In my experience some fears are hidden, they arise in the moment—a living tiger comes (ever have an encounter with a wild animal?) or it comes in the form of diagnosis, job loss, stomach sickness. When fear arises we get to see its shape, and what else arises in its wake. Some fears arise in relationship to other emotions, some fears wake us up and connect us to what matters most, some leave us deeply present, some send us worrying or bring the body into a panic state.
Other fears are more front and center. They are in response to the life we are living now. Do you have fears that you are navigating in your life now? How does fear arise? Do they come as images? Well acquainted worries? Memories? Parts of yourself?
What happens in your body? What does fear feel like? Are other emotions present as well? How does the mind react to fear?
Rilke says it this way in letters to a young poet, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Dharma practice offers us supports in meeting fear. All the practices we have can be supports: mantra, breath, grounding in the senses, opening to spaciousness, feeling fear directly in the body.
Often when we stay with fear and try to get to know it we see that it too is made of sensations, thoughts, memories, feelings—that arise and pass. Sometimes compassion arises or we have insights about the nature of fear and what is it connected to. As we practice with fear, confidence develops that we can feel fear. That we don’t have to be afraid of it.
Tremendous inner power can come from this. Throughout spiritual traditions we see depictions of sages, buddhas, bodhisattvas, shamans, gods who have relationships with fierce animals, with tigers, lions, snakes, elephants.
When we are no longer afraid of our fear.
We can roar.
Nothing in the world can frighten you.
What is your experience practicing with fear? What practices support you in meeting the fears in your life?
I had the opportunity to talk to Father John Gribowich (a friend/mentor from my high school days at Central Catholic, before either of us were priests) and David Plisky about my spiritual path, Zen Buddhist practice and its intersections with Catholicism in a episode entitled: Finding God in the Zendo , as part of their Religion to Reality podcast that is themed around listening and interfaith dialogue.
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Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Monastery
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I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.
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