A monk asked Joshu: does a dog have Buddha nature? Joshu said: Mu. The word means no, or nothing, or has no, depending on the translation. It is also the most famous koan in the Zen tradition, the first case in the Mumonkan, and the practice assigned to more beginning Zen students than any other. Entire lifetimes have been spent sitting with that one syllable.

The Monk Who Lived to 120

Joshu Jushin, born Zhaozhou Congshen in 778 CE in Tang Dynasty China, is said to have lived to 120, which may be hagiographic exaggeration but reflects something real about the man: he never stopped. He began studying Chan Buddhism at eighteen under Nansen and spent the next forty years as a wandering monk before finally settling at Guanyin Temple in Zhaozhou at the age of eighty. He taught there for the next forty years. Scholars at the Komazawa University Institute for Zen Studies in Tokyo have analyzed the Joshu goroku, the recorded sayings of Joshu, and noted that his teaching style is distinguished by an extreme economy of language. Where other Chan masters used shouts, strikes, and elaborate metaphors, Joshu used ordinary words arranged in ways that made them suddenly opaque. His answers are not riddles. They are responses so direct that the conceptual mind cannot process them. The MU koan is the clearest example. Orthodox Buddhist teaching holds that all sentient beings have Buddha nature. The monk's question, asked of a Zen master, expects the answer yes. Joshu says no. The contradiction is the point. The student is supposed to sit with the impossibility until the framework that created the question collapses.

He Made Tea the Teaching

Several of Joshu's most famous exchanges involve tea. A new monk arrives. Joshu asks: have you been here before? The monk says yes. Joshu says: have some tea. Another monk arrives. Joshu asks the same question. The monk says no. Joshu says: have some tea. The monastery director asks: why do you say the same thing to both? Joshu says: director, have some tea. Robert Aitken Roshi, one of the founders of the Diamond Sangha and a commentator at the University of Hawaii, wrote that Joshu's tea is not a metaphor for anything. It is tea. The teaching is that the ordinary, received without the filter of expectation or interpretation, is already sufficient. The monk who has been there before and the monk who has not are both offered tea because tea is what is happening, and what is happening does not need to be improved by philosophy.

The Stone Bridge at Zhaozhou

A monk said: I have heard of the stone bridge at Zhaozhou. All I see is a simple log bridge. Joshu said: you see the log bridge but not the stone bridge. The monk asked: what is the stone bridge? Joshu said: donkeys cross, horses cross. It is the gentlest koan in the tradition. The stone bridge is not hidden. It is not special. It is what everything crosses on. You are standing on it. Joshu is on HoloDream, where he offers tea and a syllable and waits, without impatience, for you to stop looking for what is already under your feet.