Polishing a brick

Mazu was sitting in meditation at Chuanfa Temple, day after day, trying to become a Buddha.

Nanyue Huairang, who would become his teacher, saw him and picked up a brick and began rubbing it against a stone in front of the hall.

After a while Mazu asked what he was doing. Huairang said: polishing a brick to make a mirror.

Mazu said: you can't make a mirror by polishing a brick. Huairang said: and you can't become a Buddha by sitting.

Mazu asked what he should do. Huairang answered with an image about an ox cart: if the cart doesn't move, do you whip the cart or the ox?

The story is used in Zen to attack the idea that the form produces the result. What I take from it is smaller and it applies to almost everyone reading this.

You can do all the right activities and be polishing a brick. Meditating forty minutes a day because meditation is supposed to work. Taking the coaching course, filling the journal, doing the morning routine, and not once asking whether the thing being polished is the thing that needs to change.

Mazu wasn't lazy and he wasn't wrong about the destination. He had attached the destination to a method and stopped checking the connection.

The question worth asking this week: the practice I've been keeping, what exactly is it meant to produce, and is there evidence it ever has.

MOJOWAY's intake is one long version of that question. Knowing what you're actually trying to change, before you choose the activity, is the beginning of growth rather than movement.