Ed Gabrielsen

In the 70’s, Houston was a boomtown. That’s why my family moved there. We moved in the summer before my sixth grade. Maybe nobody cares about this. But I care about it. It’s a story that I remember. So, I’m just telling stories here. That’s what much of our thinking is, isn’t it? Our thoughts are stories we tell ourselves. Stories with “me” at the center. Stories where “I” am the hero.

Kurt Spellmeyer talks about this in a teisho I recently listed to. Kurt Spellmeyer is an English professor at Rutgers University. He is also a Zen master and director of the Cold Mountain Zen Center in New Jersey.

I’ve been enjoying his talks, which he generously publishes online. The teisho I’m refering to here is on Case #72 in the Blue Cliff Record titled “Ungon’s “Do You Have Them or Not?”” It’s from a May-June 2007 sesshin. Here is a link to the archives where this recording can be accessed:

https://www.coldmountainzen.org/archives-2002-winter-2007/

Here is the koan:

Hyakujo asked Ungan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it? Ungan said, “Osho, do you have them or not?” Hyakujo said, “My successors will be missing.” (Sekida, 335)

Spellmeyer’s talk helped me dig into this koan. There are many points to a koan, many layers of meaning. But the point of this koan, at least, it seems to me, the one that jumped out at me, is the importance of finding one’s authentic voice. There is a tendency to center my story around myself. There is a tendency to tell a story in which I am the hero. So I construct my story this way. And I see my world this way. But what if there is another way of seeing? What if there is another way of speaking? And who am I, anyway? Who am I? How can I have a story about myself? What is that self, anyway?

I’m thinking about writing here. What is driving this? Why do I want to write? There is something in me that wants to express something. I don’t even care if it’s ever read by anyone. But I want to make it available. Maybe it will be helpful to someone else who is struggling. I don’t care about being famous or making money with writing. I just enjoy writing. Something happens and I get lost in it. It’s a meditation.

I think the question is, “What do you really want to do with your life?” And this gets answered on a minute by minute basis. It just depends on what voice we are listening to. Which of the many voices. Is it my authentic voice? Or is it some other voice? For example, my mother’s voice, or my father’s voice, or the voice of the culture, or the voice of a peer group. It can be very tricky to sort through all the voices. There is such a cacophony of sound. How do we hear the true voice of the heart?

I started out telling a story about moving to Texas when I was a kid. Maybe I will finish that story. But not right now. I’m going to listen to the voice and go with it. What will I do next? What will my authentic voice lead me to do? Where will this next moment lead? This next moment, this present moment, this, this, this, this….