There is nothing I dislike

Late last year a friend asked whether monks make resolutions. I said that I did not. But, I told her, there was this koan that had been worming its way into my consciousness: “There is nothing I dislike” by Master Linji*. I just read about in a book by John Tarrant*.

“What does that mean, to dislike?” Tarrant asks. “Dislike could mean that you are feeling a strain between how things really are and your story about how things are. … It leads to what the Buddha called building the house of pain.”

Every since inhaling Linji’s simple line, it’s been in me and through me. As I fall asleep after a day of too few accomplishments or wake from another nightmarish train ride. As I feel my pulse quicken because something or someone irritates, annoys, interferes, contradicts. As I reflect on something I’ve said or done, should have said or done, wish I could do or not do, worry I should have doing. As my body aches from malfunctions, infections, and exhaustion and my doctor fumbles to fix it. As I hear of injustice, incompetence, cruelty, deceit, and myriad problems near and far. Building the house of pain.

To take on this koan, writes Susan Murphy*, “or to let it take you on, is to allow [it] to darken you. It will take you into dark places, and you’ll have to find yourself and recognize yourself there. This practice is not about tidying up the world and making it clean and bright; it’s about recognizing the world as it is and finding right there the radical freedom of being.”

So yes, I did make a new year’s resolution. And how are things going with yours?

Linji was a 9th century Chinese monk, founder of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism.
John Tarrant. (2004). Bring me the rhinoceros (and other koans to bring you joy). New York: Harmony Books, p. 160.
Susan Murphy. (2006). Upside-down Zen: Finding the marvelous in the ordinary. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publ., p. 216.