Rinzai’s True Man of No Rank | Shōyōroku Case 38

A Teisho by Sensei Michael Brunner delivered at One River Zen on February 15, 2025

It's important for us to get a full glimpse of the vista of our karmic bind. Often, we want to remain oblivious to it. But when we ignore it, karma has a way of making itself known.

Our karmic bind starts early.

We begin life with a little bit of karmic baggage—who our parents are, what our culture values, and the community we are born into. But then the real shaping begins. We experience pain and loss, and with each of these events, we begin putting up warning signs:

• Caution: pain!—when we fall and skin our knee.

• Caution: loss!—when we experience a failed relationship.

Eventually, we are surrounded by these signs. We begin to live a tenuous life within a border of fear and cautionary tales. In response, we reshape ourselves. We construct an identity to rise to the challenge of existing in this sphere-shaped void of our own making.

But as time goes on, we realize that one size doesn’t fit all. So we become more sophisticated. We fragment the self, developing different personas—sometimes even ready-made ones from cultural narratives, adopting models from the collective unconscious. Over time, these begin to seem very substantial.

But they are not.

When gaps appear in our identity, we reach outward to plug them with external validation, possessions, or beliefs. We divide our lives into winners and losers—not for any truly altruistic reason, but because certain people and ideas don’t fit our constructed sense of self.

In this way, our actions become selfish—and yet, paradoxically, we don’t even know the self that created them. The endless shifting of our roles, the countless costume changes, only complicates the illusion.

Meanwhile, those we call “other” project onto us, just as we project onto them. We reinforce one another’s constructs, counter-transferring until we are locked in a war of identities. It might be a war in the mind, but it has real casualties.

We become oblivious to the actual rhythm of our lives, trapped instead in an ideological morass.

This is dangerous ground.

When we shape the self to address "other," we create enemies out of huge swaths of existence—all in service to an idea. Hatred forms, deepening the very divide it was meant to resolve.

This is the way of the world—but it is the antithesis of the spiritual path.

It often takes a shock for us to see this clearly—something that challenges our reliance on the constructed self. The loss of a spouse. The loss of a parent. The loss of a job. Our children moving away.

Suddenly, the house the ego built is revealed as insubstantial. It no longer fits.

So begins the long, arduous work of peeling back the layers of the construct itself.

We see all the accumulated karmic baggage trapped within the walls we built—walls that were meant to hide our vulnerability.

This is hard work. This is frightening work.

As we unravel the self, we feel exposed, vulnerable, uncertain. We experience loss, fear—because what we have so tightly wound up is coming apart.

And we don't know who we are without it.

There is a temptation to stop the process. To say, That’s enough. I’m done. To cling to a lighter form of self.

Or—God forbid—to revel in the completeness of our work.

But the work is never complete.

There is a case about this in the Shōyōroku, Case 38: Rinzai’s True Person of No Rank:

Attention!

Rinzai addressed the assembly, saying:

"There is a true person of no rank. She is always leaving and entering the gates of your face. You beginners who have not yet witnessed her, look! Look!"

Thereupon, a young monk asked, “How about this true woman of no rank?”

Rinzai got down from the seat and grabbed her.

The monk hesitated.

Rinzai pushed her away, saying: "This true woman of no rank—what a shit-stick she is!"

I always wince when I read that. Profanity is rare in the Shōyōroku. But the choice of words here is intentional. It is the only appropriate phrase for this moment.

Rinzai is cutting through our illusions.

He speaks of the true person of no rank—but who is this person? Where do you find her?

He gives us a subtle hint:

"She is always leaving and entering the gates of your face."

All those caution signs you put up in response to past pain?

They're just signs. You know you put them there.

The personalities you wear to navigate the world? Those are just boundaries created by those signs.

But you created all of it.

So what happens when it's all gone?

When there is nothing left to cling to?
Nothing left to defend?

Then—what?

Then outside is just an idea. And inside is also just an idea.

Nothing, right?

And in that moment, you are free.

Free to respond to what is present, rather than reacting from the past.

This is your true, original state.

This is the liberation that Shakyamuni pointed to so many years ago.

Even when we reach this place, we must be careful.

Rinzai gets down from his seat and grabs the monk.

The monk hesitates.

Rinzai pushes her away, saying: "This true woman of no rank—what a shit-stick she is!"

If you think this is a one-time event, something to attain and move beyond—you've missed it.

Awakening is not a spiritual trophy. It is a constant practice.

If you think, I have met the true woman of no rank, then that I is extra.

That I is made of discarded remnants of past meals.

It is clinging to a spiritual achievement—only to realize, well and truly, that it is, for lack of a better term, shit.

We have to let that go.

We have to put it down.

We have to be moved by what is present.

That is the only way to experience wisdom.

Not to possess it—but to embody it.

Dōgen talks about this in Tenzo Kyōkun, Instructions for the Cook.

He recalls an old cook, bent by years of practice, standing in the heat, fully present, sweating over his work.

Dōgen asked, “Why don’t you have someone else do this?”

The cook replied:

"They are not me."

This is not ego. It is not control.

It is a deep recognition that our practice cannot be delegated.

No one else can walk the path for you.
No one else can sit zazen for you.
No one else can take up this moment for you.

There is nowhere to hide.

So do it.

Take the first step forward.

Witness the true person of no rank—and be the compassion required in this moment.