' What is oneness reduced to ?'...

A monk asked Joshu, "All dharmas are reduced to oneness, but what is oneness reduced to?" Joshu said, "When I was in Seishu I made a hempen shirt. It weighed seven pounds."

More than a thousand years have passed since Joshu gave that response, originating one of the many classic koans that recount his provocative teachings. To this day seekers are still struggling to find a way out of the shirt. What does it mean? What is he getting at? I don't understand!

We don't just struggle with a shirt in a Zen koan. We struggle with the shirts in our hampers. With the pants, the blouses, the sheets, and the underwear. Laundry presents a mountainous practice opportunity because it provokes a never-ending pile of egocentric resistance.

It's not important to me. It's tedious. I don't like to do it!

The monk in this story is like the rest of us, seeking wisdom through intellectual inquiry. If we're not careful, this is how we approach mindfulness: as an idea, one we rather like, to elevate our lives with special contemplative consideration, a method for making smarter choices and thereby assuring better outcomes. The problem is that the life before us is the only life we have. The search for meaning robs our life of meaning, sending us back into our discursive minds while right in front of us the laundry piles up.

In his commentary on this koan, the late teacher and translator Katsuki Sekida rinsed Joshu's shirt clear of obfuscation. "Joshu's words remind us of the keen sensibilities of people who lived in the days when things were made by hand. The seven pounds of hemp was woven into cloth and cut and sewn into a shirt. When Joshu put on his hempen shirt, he experienced a sensation that was the direct recognition of the shirt for what it was."



- from an article by Karen Maezen Miller in the March 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun,