Talk One: The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage | Building the Mind of Practice

Delivered by Sensei Michael Brunner during the 2025 Ango Opening Sesshin at One River Zen, Ottawa, IL

The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage

by Sekitō Kisen (700–790 CE)

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.

The person in the hut lives here calmly,
Not stuck to inside, outside, or in between.

Places worldly people live, he doesn’t live.
Realms worldly people love, he doesn’t love.

Though the hut is small, it includes the entire world.
In ten square feet, an old man illumines forms and their nature.

A great vehicle Bodhisattva trusts without doubt.
The middling or lowly can’t help wondering;
Will this hut perish or not?

Perishable or not, the original master is present,
Not dwelling south or north, east or west.
Firmly based on steadiness, it can’t be surpassed.

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

Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest.
Thus, this mountain monk doesn’t understand at all.

Living here, he no longer works to get free.
Who would proudly arrange seats, trying to entice guests?

Turn around the light to shine within,
Then just return.

The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from.
Meet the ancestral teachers; be familiar with their instructions.
Bind grasses to build a hut and don’t give up.

Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.
Open your hands and walk, innocent.

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

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

Okay, so before we even step in to Sekitō’s song — this Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage — it helps to know a little bit about who Sekitō was, and what kind of world he was writing from.

Sekitō Kisen lived in 8th-century China during the great flowering period of Zen Buddhism. He was a third-generation heir of Daikan Enō, the Sixth Ancestor, and one of the quiet founders of what would later become the Sōtō Zen tradition.

His name, Sekitō, means “stone head.” It’s not a nickname born of stubbornness, but of steadfastness and resolve. He lived most of his life in the mountains, teaching from a small hermitage built against a rock, guiding a few students who came seeking the Way. And from that hermitage came two luminous poems that shaped Zen for centuries.

One we chant every week at service — it’s called the Sandōkai, or The Harmony of Difference and Unity. The other is this piece, The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage.

If the Sandōkai expresses a philosophy of non-duality, then this poem expresses its lived feeling. This is beyond all theory. It’s very practical. It’s about practice.

It’s how awakening breathes through the ordinary sound of the wind in the grass, the wind chimes on the deck, the smell of rice cooking, and the stillness that settles in during long periods of zazen — what we’re doing during this sesshin.

When Sekitō writes of building a grass hut, he’s really describing the building of a mind of practice — a mind that’s simple, transparent, and free. Each verse invites us deeper: from building, to dwelling, to letting the weeds grow — and finally realizing, in this section, that even the distinction between inside and outside has vanished.

It’s easy to think of this poem as a museum piece, but it’s not. It’s a mirror that asks each of us: What kind of hut have you built? What do you dwell in? What do you value? What are you clinging to? What are you ready to let go of?

So as we move through the verses over these next few days, let the poem itself fade into the background and let your own life come to the fore. You can hear it being sung back to you. Allow your own hut to come into stark contrast with what Sekitō is saying — and then allow it to fade away, to fall into the wind.

“I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value.”

We’re not talking philosophically here. We’re not opening with doctrine. We’re beginning with a depiction — a simple house made of grass — and he’s inviting us in.

This hut is not really a building in the traditional sense. It’s a dwelling of mind itself — a dwelling place, the seat of our awareness.

When he says “nothing of value,” he’s already overturning our natural order, our ordinary way of being in the world. Because we’re all inclined to build very elaborate houses — houses of ideas, of possessions, of titles — all in the hope that something will last.

But Sekitō, this foolish monk, builds a hut on purpose that can’t last. It’s going to leak. It’ll sway with the wind — because it has nothing of value.

There’s nothing to grasp, and nothing to be stolen. This is the heart of practice: to live where there is nothing left to hold on to, nothing to defend.

In a way, the hut’s very beauty lies in its uselessness. In a world obsessed with permanence, Sekitō dares us to dwell in impermanence — to see that true value isn’t in what can be owned or displayed, but in our capacity to let go.

And when we sit, we’re invited to build this same hut — built from what’s at hand: simple, breathable, temporary. We don’t reinforce the walls of the self. We let the wind come through. We let the rain come through.

To dwell in this place where there’s nothing of value is to dwell freely. There are no certainties here, and certainly no trophies. There’s also no story that must be true — just a quiet strength grounded in presence, the boundless, infinite presence of this moment.

Letting life happen and dissolve like blades of grass in the wind.

“After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.”

What a very human continuance.

There’s an old Zen story of two monks who meet on pilgrimage and recognize each other. One asks, “Who do you study with?” The other answers, and the first says, “What can your master do?”

“My teacher can write in the air, and the words will appear on parchment great distances away. He can be in two places at once.”

The first monk asks in return, “And what can your master do?”

The other says, “My master also performs great miracles. When he’s hungry, he eats. When he’s tired, he sleeps.”

And that’s the whole miracle.

This line is that same miracle. “After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.”

This is about being open. It’s not avoidance — it’s embodiment. The hermit has no split between body and mind. He eats when he’s hungry. He rests when he’s tired.

He’s not driven by guilt, ambition, or the need to prove his worth. He’s present with what is — and the imperative that’s always implicit in now.

We live in a culture, perhaps now more than ever, that idolizes busyness and preoccupation. Even when we rest — even when we sit zazen — we secretly plan.

Sekitō is teaching us the opposite: the fullness of an ordinary moment. Everything becomes sacred. Napping becomes sacred.

Because he meets each moment completely, there’s no remainder — no self to hold on to.

And this becomes the rhythm of awakened life: doing one thing at a time, fully. When we’re doing nothing, we’re really doing it.

Eating, resting, working, sitting — there’s no gap.

It’s a radical teaching, born of the truth that enlightenment isn’t hidden in some exotic practice in a faraway temple, but in the simple act of being — right here, right now, in this body, in this breath.

“When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.”

Now the hut’s been built, and immediately the weeds arrive.

Anyone who’s done gardening knows: once you finish your work and turn your back for a day, life returns from all directions.

In this case, weeds are our thoughts — our distractions, our restless habits of mind.

People often tell me, “I wish I could just stop my thinking.”

Of course you can’t stop your thinking — thinking is what minds do. Weeds grow in fertile soil. The issue isn’t the weeds — it’s how we meet them, how we name them, how we cling to them.

Sekitō isn’t cursing these weeds; he’s noticing them. Fresh weeds appear. Simple statement. No judgment. No drama.

Our task — if there is a task in zazen — is not to uproot every thought, but to be silently observant of the conditions in which they grow. Where do they come from? What sustains them? Where do they go when they pass on?

Sunlight, water, craving, fear, anger — these are the nutrients that feed our mental weeds.

When we understand this, we don’t hate them. We’re able to open to our thoughts as teachers.

As our practice deepens, the garden becomes more diverse — new kinds of thoughts, new growth. Some weeds even bloom. Some weeds choke out others.

We silently attend to them.

An awakened mind is not weed-free — it’s intimate with its own ground.

“Now it’s been lived in, and it’s covered with weeds.”

The hut — once pure and new — is overgrown. And this is still beautiful. It means life is happening, and the practice is alive.

Our vow as bodhisattvas is to live among the weeds — among all forms of suffering and human condition — and not to turn away.

It’s more than allegory.

Many of you, the longer you follow this path, will see people turn away. You’ll see the many excuses we create to avoid our lives or our practice.

We’re not trying to escape samsara — we’re going to compost it.

The hut that’s overgrown with weeds becomes a field of compassion — not just for the one who dwells there, but for all who tread that ground.

Every entanglement, every weed, is a chance to wake up — to open to the causes and conditions that brought it forth, to tend to it carefully.

And when we tend well and mindfully, we can transform suffering through the conscious act of practice.

Every entanglement is a chance to awaken.

“The person in the hut lives here calmly, not stuck to inside, outside, or in between.”

Something shifts here — and it’s not minor.

Sekitō no longer says I. He says the person in the hut.

The self has softened. Perspective has widened.

At first, the hermit was the builder. Now the builder is gone. Only the dwelling remains — and the life that courses through it.

Not stuck inside, outside, or in between — this is the freedom of non-attachment.

Inside and outside are human inventions meant to prop up the notion of I.

We draw boundaries. The wind moves through them without care.

When we release the obsession with self and other, we discover what Dōgen calls “the skin, the flesh, the bones, and the marrow of the Way.”

There’s no separation.

Living calmly is far from dull. It’s a vibrant stillness.

When the mind no longer clings, we return to that fertile field of playfulness and creativity. Joy arises naturally — not the joy of constant excitement, but the quiet joy of harmony and balance.

This is the person in the hut — not a monk hiding from the world, but a being who has ceased to divide it.

The hut becomes vast and all-encompassing, even though it’s built of simple materials by hand.

“Places worldly people live, he doesn’t live.”

Sekitō draws a contrast here, but not with judgment. The hermit simply doesn’t dwell in the same mind-states the world calls home.

Worldly life is built on preference — this is good, that is bad, I want this, I don’t want that.

We spend our days polishing the small self — our opinions, our image — and we wind up calling that life.

The grass-hut dweller doesn’t live there anymore. He lives in a different country — the country of presence.

A place where he lets the weeds be, lets the world spin, and remains rooted in quiet awareness.

“Realms worldly people love, he doesn’t love.”

This love is a form of attachment — the grasping love that says mine.

The bodhisattva’s love is vast. It includes the entire field.

Worldly love narrows — it selects and clings.

When we release that narrow love, the heart expands until it includes everything. Compassion flows naturally — not as ideal, but as the condition of being alive.

And so the hermit’s hut becomes a temple of freedom — nothing to guard, nothing to prove, nothing to love or hate in the ordinary sense.

Only the radiant suchness of things, just as they are.

Sekitō’s message is clear: build your hut from simple materials always at hand.

Weeds will come — let them grow.

Dwell calmly in this abode, and look closely at the structures within you that are impressed by the desires of the world. Don’t live there.

When you live where nothing needs to be defended, your whole life becomes the song — The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage.