The One Who Is Not Sick: Tōzan’s Illness, Book of Serenity Case 94

We often stumble through our lives and encounter the circumstances that present themselves by just stepping into them and naming them, categorizing them, giving them some meaning we imagine will help us to better understand what we're experiencing. We do it not only with our own minds. We do it with those that we consider to be other. We're constantly making judgments. We call people narcissists, or we call them toxic.

We take the circumstances of our present lives and compare them to something from the past, maybe some historical event or some previous regime, some familiar example of human cruelty or human stupidity. And in making those judgments, we hope to somehow invoke all the meaning, all the judgment, and all the fear that we've come to associate with those names. But there's something that's very strange about this habit of ours, because the circumstances of our lives are always infinitely greater than the descriptions we assign to them.

Whatever name we give to an experience, or whatever judgment we make about a person, or whatever conclusion we come to about the state of the world, the reality itself maintains a distance. It stands outside the boundaries of our conventions or the boundaries of our understanding. But we begin to live as if those conditions or those boundaries are real. We mistake our ideas about the world for the world itself.

And before long, we're no longer responding to the circumstances of our lives. We're responding to these constructions, these mind games that we play. And we do the same thing with ourselves, within ourselves, within the construct we call "I." We become sick or depressed or overwhelmed by some difficulty. And then we begin to construct an identity around that experience.

So we gather together all of our expectations, our fears, and everything we've learned about the condition, and we begin to describe ourselves in terms of it. And sometimes the description becomes so convincing that we can no longer imagine ourselves apart from it. We begin to define ourselves through it. We've created a boundary around our own being. And having created that boundary, we're destined to suffer within it. But the thing that we've confined ourselves within is nothing more than an idea. It's just a set of labels or constructs.

But we have a hint, right, that there's something about our lived experience that contains the truth of our being, and it remains entirely beyond anything we could ever say about it. There's a case in the Shōyōroku, the Book of Serenity, that takes up this question exactly. It's the 94th case. It's called "Tōzan's Illness":

Attention! Tōzan was ill. A monk asked, "Oshō, you're sick. Is there someone who's not sick?" Tōzan answered, "Well, yes, there is." The monk asked, "Does the one who is not sick look after you?" Tōzan replied, "This old monk is able to look after others." The monk asked, "Oshō, how about when you look after others?" Tōzan said, "Then the having of sickness is not seen."

The having of sickness is not seen.

So we have an interesting situation here. Tōzan is sick. And according to the old commentaries around this case, he's very sick. He's likely approaching the end of his life. And along comes this monk, who apparently decides it's a perfectly good opportunity for a little bit of Dharma combat. He wants to show his understanding. Perhaps he wants some approval from Tōzan.

But we have to, when we're thinking about this, Tōzan would probably be dead to rights in saying, "You get out." That's the appropriate activity right now. Yeah? Imagine visiting your dying teacher and seeing them lying there in their suffering. The first thing you say is, "You're sick. Is there someone who's not sick?"

But Tōzan indulges the monk because, beneath this question, as impertinent as it is, he realizes there's something tremendously important that's being asked here, that's being pointed to. And Tōzan, of course, recognizes that the question isn't really about whether he has an illness. And it's not even really about the monk trying to show some form of understanding.

It's about the way we label ourselves. It's about whether our condition, as we see it, as we imagine it, describes the entirety of who we are. As a culture, we place a great value on diagnoses. And a diagnosis is a useful thing, provided we understand what they're for and that we use them in the correct context. A diagnosis can help a physician identify the causes and conditions of an illness and help them determine the best course of treatment for that illness.

But when we begin using these diagnoses to describe the totality of our humanity, they become considerably less useful. We say, "I have cancer. I have a cell disorder." We're describing the condition of the body, for sure. But we've done something, though, when we say this: "I have," or, "I am sick." We've actually done something different. We've taken one aspect or facet of the living experience that's presenting itself and made it the defining feature of existence.

The same thing happens when we define ourselves by our depression, our anxiety, our failures, or some painful circumstance from the past. So the monk's asking, "Is there someone who's not sick?" And Tōzan answers in the affirmative. Yes. Yes, you've hit upon it. Yes, there is. Yes, there is.

Where is that someone? Can you see beyond the circumstances of your sickness, beyond the ideas you've constructed about your sickness, and recognize something that isn't confined by them? Can you see beyond the state of the world as you've assembled it in your mind, the awfulism, the challenges, and see what's actually here? Can you see beyond the notion of health and illness, good, bad, liberal and conservative?

There is a place, if we can call it a place, beyond all these distinctions, beyond our judgments. And that's a place where we remain completely vibrant, completely actualized in playful samadhi, a place where subject and object no longer take hold. There are no longer other defining characteristics of who we are or what we're encountering. Nothing is missing here. Nothing needs to be added. Nothing about our circumstances can diminish the completeness and perfection that's presenting itself.

We have to be careful here, though, because we could think that Tōzan is pointing to some other self, some permanent, indestructible being that exists somewhere beyond the body. But that's us just extending the chessboard a few more squares. Maybe another construction. Another identity. Another idea to grasp. It doesn't tell us that there's some separate realm of emptiness where we can hide from the difficulty of our lives. That's not it either.

Can you see what's beyond sickness, or your idea of sickness, when you're sick? Can you see what's beyond the idea of bad when things appear awful? Sickness, strife, don't establish the boundaries of being.

So there's an important turn here now, right? We could argue at this point that the monk is tracking. And the monk, just by asking the question, foreshadowed his response. So he's had some understanding. But now we're plodding into a category where the monk himself is challenged by what comes next.

"Does the one who is not sick look after you?"

So here's where Tōzan turns the whole case around. He says, "This old monk is able to look after others."

What an extraordinary response.

The monk wants to know whether the one who's not sick is taking care of the one who is sick. And Tōzan tells him that the sick old monk is able to take care of others. We're accustomed to thinking about this the other way around. Yeah?

So when we're sick, when we're struggling, we naturally begin to imagine that everything should accommodate the condition as we've imagined it. That people around us should recognize our suffering and minister to our needs. And of course, there are times when we genuinely need the help, or we need to enlist the help of what we call other.

But there's a distinction between receiving the care we need and allowing our suffering to become the center around which the universe has to revolve. So the important question is: when we're sick, how do we take care of the one who's not sick? When we're anxious, how do we take care of the one who's not anxious or depressed? When you're overwhelmed by the circumstances of your life, how do you take care of the one who isn't overwhelmed?

I guess the most important question is: what seat are you sitting in?

What seat are you sitting in?

Are you sitting in the seat of victimhood, from which everything appears to be a confirmation of your suffering? Or are you sitting in the place of your true nature, where you can encounter the circumstances of your life without being imprisoned?

From the perspective of our true nature, the small self we spend so much time protecting is really a constructed entity. We can see its beginning. We can see its end. We can see how it comes together through memories, expectations, judgments, and the countless ideas we've accumulated about ourselves. And we can see how many of its struggles are self-induced. How much suffering arises from trying to preserve something that has no independent existence in the first place.

The illness may be perfectly real as an experience of the body, but the person, or the notion of self that we've constructed around that illness, is another matter altogether. And when we take up the seat of our true nature, we can begin to care for that small self without having to be confined by it.

This requires placing our attention with intention, returning again and again to the circumstances of the moment rather than being absorbed by our stories about them. Always paying attention.

And what are we paying attention to? Not some special state of consciousness. Not some imagined condition of spiritual perfection. But the actual life as it's presenting itself.

When we're sick, we attend the sickness. When we're frightened, we attend the fear. We don't have to deny any of it to be in this place.

And from that position, we discover that our capacity to care for the world has never been dependent upon our circumstances being agreeable. Although we often see it that way, don't we? The circumstances of our life become challenging, and the first thing we do is? Withdraw. Take a step back.

That's karmic conditioning at play. You can see the response almost there. Suffering? No way.

But this practice is a practice of suffering presenting itself? Stepping in. Stepping in. Not resolving the issue with our minds. Resolving the issue with our hands.

We talk about this often, or I'll talk about it with you folks. If you think enlightenment is some state of mind, you're going to miss the whole thing completely. Enlightenment is not a state of mind. Enlightenment is a state of activity. If you want to experience enlightenment, you have to step into the circumstances of your life and become enlightened.

Of course, the ones I always give as explanations are: if you see something hungry, you feed it. If something is crying, you comfort it. But it goes much larger than that.

But in this place, we get a whole new perspective. Shunryu Suzuki would say that you burn yourself up in practice. Then where are you?

The monk then turns and asks the final question. The old monk is able to care for others. So the monk says, "Oshō, what about when you look after others?"

Tōzan replies, "Then the having of sickness is not seen."

This isn't some state of oblivion, right, where we're completely ignoring circumstances as they present themselves. We're just not drawing the conclusion. We're not limiting ourselves by saying, "Here are the boundaries of my life. Here's where I fit in. Here's where other is. Here's where sickness is. Here's where wellness is."

He's not saying that sickness disappears. He's not telling us that the body suddenly recovers and the pain has vanished. He's saying that the having of sickness is not seen. The possession by that illness is not seen.

We've become so accustomed to organizing the causes and conditions of our life into something that belongs to us. We have this great collection of experiences, memories, sensations, and judgments, and somehow in the middle of it, we draw a circle and write the word "I." And then everything within that circle becomes something that this imagined person possesses.

And we'd like to think that since we've created this heaven of our own accord, everything we put inside is good. But is that how it works? No.

My victimhood. My suffering. My illness. My depression. My fear. My suffering.

But when you look very carefully, the word possesses those things. And when we examine the collection of causes and conditions and discover that the boundaries we've drawn around it were never anything more than our own contrivance, then we can see clearly. This notion of a separate or independent self begins to loosen its grip a little bit.

We're free to respond to what's actually here. We're free, of course, to take care of the body that presents itself in the mirror. To attend to the illness as sensation rises in the realm of our conscious awareness. To offer ourselves to this great world without having to make the whole matter into a story about "me."

What is the self, after all, that we're trying to preserve? We're struggling to maintain our ideas about ourselves and protecting all the things that small self cherishes. What is it that we're actually protecting? What are we sacrificing in the practice? When we grasp onto that, what are we not free to engage with?

When we become occupied by our own fears, our own judgments, or the ideas about how things ought to be, then our hands are cluttered and we can't open, or can't turn the knob to, the Dharma gate that's presenting itself in this very moment. But if we can put down these ideas and let go of our fixed notions about life, death, sickness, health, then we'll actually experience life and death and sickness and health, but not all of the contrived baggage that comes with those things.

It doesn't mean we stop working to relieve suffering or change the circumstances that need to be changed. It means we're actually free to do so. Our actions are no longer governed by our resistance to reality or our attempt to escape.

The verse that follows this koan in the Shōyōroku says, "When the field's water drains, autumn's wet recedes, and when the white clouds dissipate, the old mountain is chilled."

Things become as they are.

It's what I wanted you to consider this morning. Whatever circumstances you've brought into this room, whatever difficulties you're facing, whatever names you've given to the conditions of your life, look carefully at the boundaries you've constructed around them. See how easily you've mistaken these boundaries for the limits of your own being.

Then ask yourself Tōzan's question: is there someone who's not sick? Is there someone who's beyond facing these challenges?

Don't turn the answer into another idea, though. Don't make it something you believe in. Look. Drill directly into the bedrock of your experience.

And when you can see beyond the small self, all the things that struggle to preserve it, all of a sudden you can see the limitless possibilities that emerge right before your eyes. You can also begin to appreciate your capacity to meet it with wisdom before knowing.

The question was never simply whether Tōzan was sick. The question is whether sickness could prevent him from being fully alive, fully present, and fully available to the world.

And Tōzan gave us his answer:

"This old monk is able to look after others."

What about you?