Nothing in this World Frightens Me

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.