Ed Gabrielsen

I was standing by the kitchen counter talking on the phone. It was one of those old phones, you know, the kind that was attached to the wall. It was our kitchen phone. It had a long cord so you could walk around with it. I was talking on the phone to a man in Colorado. I was about 21 years old. Trying to figure out what to do.

I remember my mother said to me when I hung up the phone, she said, “That would just be going backwards, wouldn’t it? Going back to something you have already done? Is that what you really want to do?”

Looking back at this I can see my mother’s wisdom. At the time, I discounted her. I thought I knew everything about everything. Maybe that’s the problem with being 21 years old. I discounted her also because things were chaotic at our house at the time. But it wasn’t her fault that my father was struggling with his mental health and addictions. She was just trying to cope. And deal with all of the fallout. And the way it was affecting her two boys.

My brother was at college by this time. I had come home. Dropped out of school and started working in a restaurant. But I made this phone call to Colorado on a whim. Maybe I could go back to that camp and work on their maintenence crew. I loved it up there in the mountains. I had gone there every summer and attended all the different levels of the camp. Now I was too old to be a camper anymore. But I could go back there to work on the maintenance crew. I was looking for something, looking for some stability, looking for peace, looking for who I really was. I was looking for the dragon.

Maybe I should have gone to Colorado anyway. I think my mother was sincerely trying to be helpful. And it was true that going back to the summer camp in the mountains would have been going back to something I had already done. But, too, it would have been something new. It would have been a new direction. Working there high in the mountains. I always loved the mountains. But I was trying to figure things out. And I was worried about my mother and father. That’s why I dropped out of college and came back home to live with my mom. To try to help her and my dad. I was worried about them. I was so worried that I couldn’t concentrate in my classes at school. Even though I was a good student, I was so bright, so creative, and yet, my imagination would run away with me. I couldn’t stop worrying about my mother and father. Why did this have to happen?

There is a koan called “Ummon’s Staff Becoming a Dragon.” It’s #60 in the Blue Cliff Record. It goes like this:

“Ummon held out his staff and said to the assembled monks,”The staff has transformed itself into a dragon and swallowed up the universe! Where are the mountains, the rivers, and the great world?””

The amazing thing about koans is that they are so open ended. In a way, they are like a mirror. But it’s a different kind of mirror. It’s a mirror that can reveal your true face. Not the face that you think you have. But who you really are. And this kind of mirror takes some time to look into. It takes some time to actually see the thing that is there. So koans take time. It’s like when you are shaving in the bathroom and the mirror gets all foggy. You have to keep wiping it clean to be able to see. And even then, the relfection is murky. But eventually, you can wipe it clean and get a clear picture. That’s what working with a koan is like. It takes time for the message to percolate through.

This morning, I listed to a teisho by Kurt Spellmeyer. It was a teisho on this koan about Ummon’s staff and the dragon. “Teisho” is a form of teaching in which the teacher presents the koan and then talks about it extemporaneously. The word “teisho” means “shout.” A teisho is meant to be a shout that reveals the true nature. So it’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s not like a lecture where facts and theories are presented and need to be memorized. It’s more like free form poetry that evokes something. And that something takes time to percolate through. The meaning is not immediately clear. Actually, I think, lisenting to a teisho is another form of meditation. So it’s very interesting to watch how these things unfold.

In his teisho on case #60, Roshi Spellmeyer talked about how so many people do not live their own life, but rather, they live the life that others want them to live. Wanting to please father. Wanting to please mother. People choose lives and careers that will please others. But then, they find themselves unhappy later on down the road.

It’s so interesting to watch how these things unfold. What is the dragon? In the introduction to the koan, there is a comment by Engo. He writes, “Buddhas and sentient beings are not, by nature, different. Mountains, rivers, and your own self are all just the same. Why should they be separate and constitute two worlds?”

Why should they be different? What is the dragon? When do we begin to live our own life and let go of the life that we thought everyone else wanted us to live? How about now?

In Sekida’s translation of the koan, he writes a commentary on this poem by Engo. Of the line “Mountains, rivers, and your owns self are all just the same,” Sekida writes: “Mountains and rivers reperesent the external world; your own self represents inner experience. Together, these two–objective and subjective, matter and mind–constitute one world. They are not distinct from each other.” (Sekida, 312)

So maybe this is what Ummon is getting at. What is the dragon? What is the staff? What happens when the staff transforms itself into a dragon that swallows up the entire universe?

–Camden, Maine, February 16, 2026

Mount Elbert (14,440 ft.) in Colorado is the highest peak in the state.