Talk Four: The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage | Turn the Light Within and Return

All right, here we are, day six of sesshin — or maybe day five, depending on how we’re counting — but in any case, we’ve been at it for a while now. A lot of sitting. A lot of stillness. A lot of small things coming and going. And through it all, something steady keeps showing itself.

It’s a simple process, but it isn’t easy. It never is. Every time we settle in, we find that the mind begins to circle. Thoughts come up, stories come up, and pretty soon we start trying to push them away. But the mind doesn’t need to be fought with. It needs space. Just open the front door and the back door of the mind, and let the guests come and go as they will. You don’t have to serve them tea.

Yesterday we opened into vastness. We saw that even though the hut is small, it contains the entire world. Today we begin to take up our abode in that vastness — not as an idea, not as something mystical or far away, but as the steady ordinariness of our life. The theme here is embodiment. After realization, we don’t float away; we sweep the floor, we patch the roof, we listen to the wind chimes. We return to the same hut, but everything has changed.

Firmly based on steadiness, it can’t be surpassed.

Here the poem begins to speak of stability — but not rigidity. It’s a grounded ease, a natural balance that comes when the idea of escape has fallen away. Awakening isn’t an exit strategy. It’s a return to our natural poise.

When we stop constructing our lives around some notion of a fixed self — this small self with its fears and ambitions and comparisons — what remains is simple steadiness. And that steadiness isn’t cold or detached. It’s the firm soil from which compassion grows. In abiding with the weeds, in bearing witness to what arises, we begin to manifest that steadiness as action. Because we’re no longer propping up an identity, we can move freely through the world.

When the wind blows, we sway. When suffering arises, we respond. When the moment is still, we rest. Dongshan once said, When the mind is at peace, wherever you are is pleasant. That’s what Sekitō is pointing to here. When our view is no longer built on judgment or gain, we can abide anywhere — even in the marketplace, even amid heartbreak, even right here in the middle of this noisy world. This is the unsurpassable mind, not because it’s lofty, but because it’s ordinary and contains everything.

A shining window below the green pines; jade palaces or vermilion towers can’t compare.

Within that steadiness, there is beauty. A simple hut, a shining window, the green of pine needles moving in the breeze — this is enough. Within sufficiency there’s a kind of opulence. We don’t have to add anything to it. Perhaps we’ve walked past this view a thousand times without seeing it. But when the mind is quiet, the splendor of suchness reveals itself.

Those jade palaces and vermilion towers are the great constructions of human ambition — all the projects and performances we build to outshine one another. But beneath the pine, there’s already light, and it doesn’t depend on jewels. It’s the light of our own presence.

There’s a passage in the Gospel of Matthew that says, Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. It’s the same wisdom. The unadorned beauty of suchness needs no improvement. When we drop the project of self-improvement, we find that life was already growing perfectly well without our supervision. Every breath, every gust of wind through the pines, every impermanent moment — all of it is the shining window.

And even when we argue with our spouse, or when we get caught in something small and human, the simplicity of the moment is still there, waiting beneath our judgments. When we meet it directly, compassion arises naturally. It’s not about making ourselves feel a certain way. It’s about removing what obstructs our seeing.

Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest.

This isn’t a trance or a withdrawal. It’s the natural posture of an awakened life. When the hermit sits with head covered, he’s sheltered in simplicity. No storm can touch him, because he’s not separate from the storm. He’s not guarding against life; he’s one with it.

We take refuge in that same simplicity when we sit zazen. We don’t sit for enlightenment, or for merit, or even for calm. We just sit because sitting is how the universe expresses itself in this body, in this moment. When Sekitō says, all things are at rest, he doesn’t mean the world has stopped. He means that everything is at rest in its own nature. The rain falls, thoughts rise, birds sing — and each is complete.

To recognize that is to see the perfection that’s always present, even in the middle of imperfection. The moment we stop dividing the world into sacred and profane, good and bad, enlightenment and delusion, we see that the whole thing has been the Dharma all along.

And it’s from this rest that compassion begins. Not the concept of compassion, but the living movement of it. The moment we stop resisting what is, the heart opens by itself.

Thus, this mountain monk doesn’t understand at all.

And that’s the next line. After all these luminous insights, Sekitō ends with not understanding. He bows, smiles, and says, “I don’t understand at all.”

That line is one of the most profound in all of Zen literature. After everything—the steadiness, the beauty, the shining window, the quiet mind—he lands on not knowing.

Letting go of understanding is the most difficult thing we do, because we think we can master awakening by understanding it. We imagine there’s some mental key that will unlock it. But the more we grasp, the farther we move away.

In Zen we call this fushiryo—“beyond thinking.” It’s not anti-intellectual; it’s intimacy. It’s not confusion; it’s presence. The “not understanding” that Sekitō points to isn’t ignorance—it’s directness. It’s what happens when we stop dividing the world into a subject that understands and an object to be understood.

Every time we think we’ve pinned down the Dharma, it slips through our fingers. That’s its nature. The Dharma isn’t a theory; it’s alive. When we drop the need to explain it, it begins to reveal itself through the very stuff of our life—the breath, the sound of rain, the movement of our body as we bow.

To not understand at all is to stand free of all conclusions. It’s freedom itself.

And then he continues:

Living here, he no longer works to get free.

What a radical line. The hermit no longer strives for liberation because he’s discovered there was never a cage. He’s not lazy; he’s free. Freedom is no longer something to attain—it’s what’s left when you stop trying to escape.

To “work to get free” is to believe there’s some place other than here. But when you live in the hut fully, without resistance, the work disappears because there’s no distance between you and the Way.

This is the natural fruit of not-knowing: you stop chasing the mirage of a better self and begin to live the self that’s here.

Sekitō writes,

Who would proudly arrange seats, trying to entice guests?

This is his little laugh at human vanity. He’s turning his gaze back to the world and to our endless efforts to impress one another. In the Chinese temples of his time, arranging seats was a ritualized way of preparing for visitors or dignitaries. It was a show of status and decorum—who sits where, who’s honored, who’s served first.

We all do this in subtler ways. We arrange the furniture of our lives to appear a certain way. We arrange reputations, achievements, possessions. We arrange the way we talk, the clothes we wear, the image we cultivate. It’s the ego’s constant rearranging, hoping the right configuration will make it real.

But what is there to host? Who is there to impress?

In Zen language, “host” and “guest” are metaphors for the absolute and the relative. To arrange seats is to divide the world again—to set up host and guest, inside and outside. But when you look closely, there’s no boundary. The host has always included the guest. The moment you stop dividing, you realize the whole thing is already hosting itself.

So Sekitō laughs. “Who would do this?” The hut doesn’t arrange seats. The hut just sits.

And that’s what we’re learning to do. To stop entertaining the endless parade of guests—thoughts, fears, reputations, self-images—and simply rest as the space in which they appear.

This isn’t withdrawal. It’s the truest hospitality. When you stop trying to be the host, everything belongs. The guests come and go as they please, and the hut remains open, undefended.

Sekitō’s teaching here is the final turning. From effort to ease, from understanding to wonder, from separation to intimacy.

He’s showing us that the entire poem—from the building of the hut to the growing of weeds, from the calm abiding to the shining window—culminates in this simple, disarming return. There’s no longer a hermit building a hut. There’s just the hut building itself.

The grass binds itself together, the wind blows through, and everything abides as it is.

When we reach this point in sesshin, the mind begins to quiet in a different way. There’s a rhythm to the days now. The meals, the bells, the sits—they’ve all become one movement. The striving has softened. The “I” who came here to practice begins to dissolve into the practice itself.

That’s why Sekitō’s poem feels so alive at this point. It’s describing exactly what you begin to feel in your bones after days of silence. The hut is real. The weeds are real. The stillness is real. But more than that, the absence of division becomes real.

And that’s the threshold into this final teaching:

Turn the light to shine within, then just return.

You can feel how the poem begins to fold in on itself here. Everything we’ve been doing—the sitting, the bowing, the chanting—has been turning the light without us realizing it. Now Sekitō names it directly.

Turning the light to shine within doesn’t mean introspection. It’s not about examining the self or digging for hidden truths. It means letting awareness rest in itself.

Normally, our attention is turned outward—we chase what we see, hear, and think. But in this turning, awareness turns back upon itself. It sees that what it has been looking for was never elsewhere.

When you turn the light, both “inward” and “outward” disappear. You discover that the light was never directional. It simply illuminates.

And then he says, then just return.

Return to what? To this. To the ordinary, to the laughter in the kitchen, to the aching knees, to the sound of a bell. Return to the life you already have. Return to being human.

There’s no reward waiting at the end of this poem. No prize for endurance. The return itself is the reward. The end of seeking.

That’s why sesshin ends quietly. Not with fireworks, not with answers, but with this deep exhale.

The light has turned. Now we return.

The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from.

This is one of those lines that stops you in your tracks. You can’t face it, and you can’t turn away from it. Why? Because it’s not something other than you. The source doesn’t exist as an object to be approached. It’s the very field in which “you” and “it” arise together.

In this turning, the whole notion of separation collapses. The vast, inconceivable source isn’t a place to arrive; it’s the background hum of everything — the quiet presence that has been here from the beginning.

You can’t see it because you’re seeing as it.
You can’t reach it because you’ve never left it.

And you can’t avoid it, even when you’re lost in distraction. That’s the strange mercy of the Way — even when we’re furthest from ourselves, we’re still breathing the air of the source.

So Sekitō says you can neither face it nor turn away from it. It’s too close. It’s closer than close. It’s the seeing itself.

When you sit long enough, the boundaries start to blur. You don’t “enter” enlightenment; you begin to notice that you’ve always been inside it. Even your restlessness is made of it.

Sekitō continues:

Meet the ancestral teachers; be familiar with their instructions. Bind grasses to build a hut and don’t give up.

The ancestors here aren’t just historical figures. They’re the living presence of wisdom itself — the same spirit that’s been awakening, over and over, in every age. They’re the voice that speaks through you when you stop talking to yourself.

To “bind grasses” again is to keep practicing. You don’t build the hut once and for all. It decays, it leaks, it collapses — and you gather more grass, tie it together, rebuild.

That’s our life. That’s what practice really looks like. You wake up a little, fall asleep again, wake up again. Each time you rebuild the hut, it becomes simpler, lighter, more transparent.

And he says, don’t give up.

This isn’t the desperate “don’t give up” of self-improvement; it’s the quiet vow of perseverance. The bodhisattva doesn’t practice because it’s easy or even because it works — we practice because it’s true.

There are moments when the Way seems hidden, when your meditation feels flat or lifeless. But even that flatness is part of the hut. Even the feeling of being lost is itself made of the Way.

That’s what Sekitō is reminding us: even the imperfection belongs. Even the leaking roof, even the forgotten meal, even the sadness that sneaks in during evening zazen — all of it is part of the hut.

Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.

When I read this line, I always feel a kind of release move through my shoulders. You can feel him sigh here.

We spend so much of our lives carrying the weight of time — our history, our failures, our plans, our lineage, even our stories of who we are. Sekitō says, let all that go. Let hundreds of years go.

That doesn’t mean abandon memory. It means release identification. Stop holding the story so tightly that it defines you.

We often imagine that freedom lies ahead of us somewhere — that if we just work hard enough, or sit long enough, we’ll get there. But Sekitō says, it’s not forward. It’s here. It’s what’s left when you let the centuries fall away and relax completely into the moment.

Relax completely. Not halfway, not cautiously. All the way.

We’re so conditioned to live with tension — even our spiritual tension, our striving to awaken. But here, he says, drop it. Let it all go. Relax into the ground that’s been carrying you from the beginning.

Open your hands and walk, innocent.

It’s such a tender line. It means, walk through the world without grasping. Open hands are hands that can give and receive. Innocence here doesn’t mean ignorance — it means undefended.

When we walk innocent, we’re no longer trying to manipulate outcomes. We’re no longer strategizing. We’re just moving through life with the same ease the wind has when it passes through the trees.

There’s a freshness to that, a kind of rebirth. When you walk innocent, every encounter is new. You stop meeting the past version of people. You meet them as they are now.

When Sekitō says “open your hands,” he’s talking about trust. Trust in the Dharma, trust in the Way, trust in the fact that you don’t need to add anything to this moment for it to be complete.

Open hands are compassionate hands. They hold nothing, yet they offer everything.

Thousands of words, myriad interpretations, are only to free you from obstructions.

You can feel him smiling here, can’t you? It’s almost playful. He’s been writing this whole long poem, and now he admits — all of it, all the words, all the teaching, are just tools for clearing the way.

Everything we study — sutras, commentaries, even this poem — exists to dissolve the very structures that hold us back. Once the obstruction is gone, the words fall away naturally.

It’s like training wheels. You don’t need to throw them away angrily; they just stop being necessary.

That’s the function of the Dharma — to liberate, not to decorate.

And finally, Sekitō concludes:

If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don’t separate from this skin bag here and now.

It’s such a beautiful, humble ending. After all this imagery — the building, the weeds, the shining window, the not-knowing — he brings it all back to the body.

Don’t separate from this skin bag here and now.

The “undying person” isn’t some immortal soul floating above it all. It’s the awareness that lives through your very flesh — the presence that breathes you, that hears these words, that aches and laughs and keeps sitting anyway.

We tend to imagine enlightenment as escape, as a kind of transcendence beyond form. But here, Sekitō reminds us: form is the way. This skin bag — this aging, imperfect, breathing, feeling body — is the gate of liberation.

Don’t separate from it. Don’t wait for something cleaner or purer. This is it.

When he says don’t separate from this skin bag here and now, it’s an invitation to intimacy. This body, this life, just as it is — tired, aching, breathing, doubting — this is the very site of awakening.

So often we think of practice as a way to transcend the human mess of things. We imagine some higher version of ourselves, calm and radiant, untouched by confusion. But Sekitō’s final line undercuts that dream entirely. The undying person isn’t found by leaving the human condition behind — it’s revealed when we enter it completely.

This very body, with all its limits, is the field of enlightenment. To live here is to live in the eternal.

And that’s where the poem ends — with a bow back into the ordinary.
No fireworks, no grand pronouncement. Just the steady reminder that nothing needs to be added.

After days of sesshin, when the body is weary and the mind has softened, this truth becomes visible. The hut isn’t something you built once long ago. It’s here, being rebuilt in each breath, each act of attention, each time you turn back to what’s real.

It’s easy to imagine that the hut is something we must protect — that stillness is fragile, that silence is a delicate state easily broken. But silence is vast; stillness is indestructible. Even as the world moves and our minds whirl, the hut remains untouched because it was never separate from the movement.

When the body bows, the hut bows. When you stand, the hut stands.
When you speak, the hut speaks.

There’s nothing outside it.

The point of all our practice — the sitting, the chanting, the bowing, the long hours of silence — is to realize that nothing is outside the hut. We don’t use meditation to build a private refuge apart from the world. We discover that the world itself is the hermitage.

Everywhere you go, the grass binds itself into walls. Every sound is the wind through its thatch. Every breath is its own bell.

When you see that, you can’t help but smile. The boundaries fall away. Inside and outside vanish. The hut and the builder and the world all collapse into a single, seamless thing.

That’s what Sekitō means by just return. Return to the ordinariness that’s been waiting all along. Return to the rice cooking, the sound of footsteps, the small acts that make up a day. Return to the world that was never apart from awakening.

When you rise from your cushion and step outside, don’t think that sesshin is ending. Sesshin is only ever beginning. It begins when you wash your bowl, when you drive home, when you sit with your child, when you meet the next hard thing that comes. The hut doesn’t close when the retreat ends.

It’s here — this very moment, this very breath, this body that carries you.

To live this way is to live the poem. It’s to let the poem dissolve into your bones until its lines become your own life.

I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it’s been lived in, and it’s covered with weeds.

You know those lines by now. You’ve lived them this week. You’ve felt the weeds grow, you’ve sat in the stillness, you’ve seen the world expand and contract within the small hut of this body.

And now we arrive at the last words again:

If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don’t separate from this skin bag here and now.

That’s the closing of sesshin. That’s the return.

This whole journey has been one long turning — from effort to ease, from ideas to experience, from separation to intimacy. The hut that once seemed small now contains the entire world. And the one who built it? He’s gone. Only the hut remains, living and breathing and shining quietly in the light.

As you step back into your daily life, remember: you don’t leave this behind. You don’t need to find your way back. You’re already home.

The grass hut travels with you — in the sound of the kettle, in the taste of coffee, in the first words you speak to the next person you meet.

That’s all.
That’s everything.