Book of Equanimity Case 21 — Ungan Sweeps the Ground | Zen Teishō by Sensei Michael Brunner

Sometimes we all fall into a karmic trap, and the way we fall into it is actually pretty simple. We divide our life into two layers. It’s almost always a dichotomy. We like that — left foot, right foot, this or that. There’s what’s happening on the one hand, and then there’s what we think about what’s happening on the other. And over time, very subtly, we begin to believe that the second layer is the more important one.

We’re working, but at the same time we’re evaluating how we’re working. We’re speaking, but we’re measuring how we’re being received. We’re practicing, but we’re asking ourselves whether this practice is doing anything. Very quickly, the commentary becomes primary, and the activity itself fades into the background. And what could possibly go wrong?

This happens everywhere. But it’s especially troubling in spiritual life, because then the commentary gets very refined. We start asking questions like: Am I progressing? Am I sincere? Am I deluded? Am I awakened? Even when we’re doing something simple, there’s this subtle tightening around the idea of the “I” who’s doing it. That tightening — that’s the problem. The problem isn’t effort. It isn’t activity. It isn’t discipline. It’s the tightening around identity and the judgments that gather around it.

There’s a case in the Book of Equanimity that points directly at this. Case 21, Ungan Sweeps the Ground.

It begins:

Attention! As Ungan was sweeping the ground, Dogo said, “You’re hard at it!”
Ungan replied, “You should know there’s one who isn’t hard at it!”
Dogo said, “So, is there a second moon?”
Ungan held up the broom saying, “Which moon is this?”
Dogo desisted.
Regarding this, Gensha remarked, “Indeed, this is the second moon.”
Ummon also said, “The butler watches the maid politely.”

That’s the case.

And if we’re honest, the first thing that happens for most of us is immediate temptation. We want to explain it. We want to solve it. We want to demonstrate understanding. Maybe it’s about the relative and the absolute. Maybe it’s about effort and non-effort. Maybe it’s delusion and awakening. But before we go anywhere near that, it’s important to begin at the beginning — and maybe even stay there.

Ungan is sweeping. Just sweeping. There’s intention. There’s dust. There’s sound. There’s weight in the hands. There’s even a smell. There’s nothing mystical about it. It’s just sweeping.

Then Dogo walks up and says, “You’re hard at it.” And something shifts. It’s subtle, but it’s enormous. Because now the sweeping and the sweeper separate. The sweeping becomes about Ungan — about effort, about whether he’s doing too much, whether he’s overexerting, whether he’s performing. Commentary has entered the field. And since this is a mondo — a Dharma encounter — a challenge has been thrown down. Now it’s not just sweeping. Now it’s: who will show their understanding?

Nothing changed in the sweeping itself. But everything changed in the atmosphere. Heaven and hell separate in a sentence.

“You’re hard at it.”

How often does this happen in our own lives? We’re engaged in something and suddenly we’re the one who’s working too hard. Or not hard enough. We’re the one who sounds foolish. Or clever. We’re sitting in meditation and now we’re the one who’s distracted — or calm. Activity becomes identity.

Ungan replies, “You should know there’s one who isn’t hard at it.” There’s deep wisdom there. But you can’t think it out. You have to enact it. You have to live it. There is something beyond the idea of striving, but you don’t find it by stepping outside the activity. You find it in full immersion in it.

And yet — because he said it — the world splits again. Now there’s the striving self and the non-striving self. There’s the awakened self who isn’t hard at it. There’s the deluded self who is.

So Dogo presses: “So, is there a second moon?”

The mind always wants to categorize. Always wants to win the exchange. And if someone wins, someone must lose.

Sometimes when I’m teaching, I talk about coming into practice with a board on your shoulder. You walk through the front door with a board resting on one shoulder and you see everything through the lens of the discursive mind. Am I doing well? Do I belong here? What’s this guy going to try to tell me? I’m not going in for all this Buddhist stuff. There’s this whole layer of judgment, and because of it we can’t move freely.

Then someone says, just shift the board to the other shoulder. And suddenly — vast openness. No examiner. No examined. No judgment. No label. There’s lightness. It feels like awakening.

But the board is still there. We’ve just moved it. We traded a working self for a spiritual self. A judging self for a non-judging self.

That’s what Dogo is pointing at. If there’s a self at all who “isn’t hard at it,” you’ve grown a second head on top of your head. You’ve created a second moon to admire.

Ultimately, you have to put the board down.

Just keep sweeping.

That doesn’t mean you drift aimlessly. Intention matters. It has to be set deeply enough that you return to it over and over again. We articulate that here as the Four Bodhisattva Vows: creations are numberless; I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to transform them. Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them. The awakened way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it. That’s not commentary. That’s direction. That’s returning.

But instead, we trade that for speculation. Which moon is it? Is this effort? Is this non-effort? The broom is still in his hand. Sweeping hasn’t stopped. Nothing mystical happened. The division appears when narration begins.

The case says Dogo desisted. He stopped. That stopping — that refusal to keep spinning conceptual wheels — is the appropriate response. Anything further would create more ripples.

Gensha then says, “Indeed, this is the second moon.” And when Ummon says, “The butler watches the maid politely,” he’s pointing to that same subtle split — the refined self observing itself being refined.

We look at a pond full of ripples and say, I want that smooth again. So we stick our hands in and try to pat it flat. That works well, doesn’t it? Eventually you have to stop meddling and let it settle.

This case isn’t asking you to eliminate effort. It’s asking you to see how activity loses its natural functioning when we tighten around it.

This week many of you are going to have long to-do lists. And when you sit, Mara will show up with 108 things you should be doing instead. Watch how quickly you become the one who’s hard at it — or the one who isn’t hard at it. Look directly. Don’t trade the moon for an idea of the moon. Don’t answer life with your head. Work it through with your hands.

Just keep sweeping.

Address suffering as you find it. If it’s hungry, feed it. If it’s crying, hold it. That’s where it resolves.

And when it resolves, you’ll meet someone everywhere you look looking back at you. You’ll meet your true nature — basic, clean, unobstructed.

But you have to resolve to see it through with your hands and your heart.

Not your head.