Many peope become interested in Buddhism because they believe it promises
a way of transcending the trials of everyday life.
According to this belief, practicing Buddhism eventually results in
the consumated experience of release or freedom from suffering —
the personal attainment of enlightenment. Often, this is imagined
as a brilliant opening through which the practitioner passes
once and for all into the extraordinary — a gateway to infinite
spiritual bliss and completion.

Chan Buddhists do use metaphors of doors or gateways
in explaining how one enters the spirit of Chan.
But they refer to passages that open fully
into the world,
not out of it.
Passing through the gate of Chan is to leave behind
the narrowness of the self
and its binding destinies....

by Peter D. Hershock
Introduction, Chan Buddhism
University of Hawai'i Press, 2005

XVII-a

Coyoté sees dust-devils rising on the morning light.
It's too soon, he thinks, not yet spring.
The rain has not come as it should.
The land warms and squiggles dust
in the currents of air rising
with the morning sun.

Owl loves it.
Not the grit,
but the opportunity
of ground squirrels, driven by hunger, to stray out too far.

Coyoté just waits for dusk.
He pants by the creosote,
ambles toward the mesquite.
Thin shade without the spring rain
but shade.
For now, he waits,
finds what cool air he can —
cool, moist would be nice....

...Chan directs us into an unending process of cultivating and demonstrating
both appreciative and contributory virtuosity —
a horizonless capacity for according with our situation
and responding as needed.
This is not freedom from the world
and its relationships
but tirelessly within them.

by Peter D. Hershock
Introduction, Chan Buddhism
University of Hawai'i Press, 2005

XVII-b

Coyoté watchs Owl swoop, quiet, toward the squirrel.
But the breeze spooks the prey and Owl shifts up
into the mesquite above Coyoté.

He catches his breath as he scans the valley floor.
More flying than he wants to do.
Wrong time of day too,
but there is a memory of the summer
when he struck out on his own.
He never saw his kin again.
A hard, hot summer. Hunger.

Owl scans for clouds,
any hint of rain.
Any hint of cooling nights
filled with dinner.

Coyoté savors memory as well.
Vaguely, a thought flits through
about a gateless gate.
Coyoté just waits for dusk.