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Blue Cliff Record Case 6:

Yun-Men taught by saying, “I do not ask you about before the 15th of the month. Come, give a phrase about after the 15th:”

He himself responded, “Every day is a good day”

What I love about the Zen koans is how they don’t explain but they show. Master Yunmen shows his gratitude in this story. His complete appreciation for every day. Whether it’s a day we like or a day we don’t like. Whether it’s the full moon or before the full moon or after the full moon.

Yunmen lived in the 9th century – 860 to 949. These Zen masters lived a long time. 89 years old when he died. He was seen later on as the founder of one of the Five Houses of Zen.

He is found often in the traditional koan collections. 18 times in the Blue Cliff Record that this case is found in.

He is the subject of one of many famous and somewhat violent Zen stories.

While a boy, Yunmen became a monk under a “commandment master” named Zhi Cheng in Jiaxing. He studied there for several years, taking his monastic vows at age 20, in 883 CE.

The teachings there did not satisfy him, and he went to Daozong’s school to gain enlightenment. According to a legend, first mentioned in 1100, he had his leg broken for his trouble:

Ummon [Yunmen] went to Bokushu’s temple to seek Zen. The first time he went, he was not admitted. The second time he went, he was not admitted. The third time he went the gate was opened slightly by Bokushu, and thus Ummon stuck his leg in attempting to gain entrance. Bokushu urged him to “Speak! Speak!”; as Ummon opened his mouth, Bokushu pushed him out and slammed shut the large gate so swiftly that Ummon’s leg was caught and was broken.

We don’t push so hard in our temple here. But I think we should be clear that there is a real place to devotion and discipline. It’s okay to take this practice seriously.

And it’s good to learn how to relax and put it all down.

I do not ask you about the day before Thanksgiving; come, say something, about what happens the day after Thanksgiving?

Every day is a good day.

Every day is a day to offer thanks.

I had a challenging interaction with some colleagues yesterday morning. They were questioning some of my choices and how I’d expressed a few things. They were actually very careful to be kind and supportive in how they brought this up. And I could feel myself taking it in, and starting to shut down. It didn’t feel like a good day any more.

And as I hung out at home that night I thought about this conversion. The morning I woke up I thought about it. It came and went all day. It distracted me a bit when I was out walking with my wife. My mind was on the conversation and I wasn’t really there with her part of the time. And then this afternoon, somehow it lifted. I could feel it lifting. When it was settled on me I couldn’t quite imagine that possibility of it just lifting. It felt like something I had to solve and figure out. I wrote a long email which, thankfully, I didn’t send. While in this state. In my journal I wrote that I realized I’d been “enflammed” and enflammed state. This will happen in our sangha conflicts too. We enter a disoriented state and we have one attitude, one approach.

Sometimes if we can just be with it it will shift or life and then we have a different situation. There is still stuff to work out with those colleagues but it doesn’t have the same fear and urgency that it did. I return to a wise place. I return to gratitude. I return to every day is a good day.

Maybe one day we can learn to rest in every day is a good day….every day. I don’t know. But I do know it’s a space we can return to. It’s a space we can feel. It’s a space we can stand in even when there’s no where to stand. And from that place we can be kinder, clearer and wiser. Compassion and wisdom are found there.

John Tarrant is a Zen teacher from New Zealand who teaches in California and I understand does a weekend retreat in Seatlte once a year – we should all try to go. He’s big on koans and working with them in a very flexible way.

I found some comments he made on this case.

The teacher said, “I’m not asking about before the full moon, say a word or two about after the full moon.”

The teacher answered the question, “Every day is a good day.”

Gratitude comes with a feeling of openness, shyness, vulnerability. The person who is grateful can be hurt or rejected, she is taking a risk. With gratitude, there is more at stake, life is not small.

Gratitude can surprise me just the way a poem or a song can surprise me, and fling me into another wider air. When the ancient Chinese thought of waking up as intimacy, they were referring to an appreciation for trees and rivers, an appreciation so strong that it amounted to identification—what’s outside of us is us too. They also meant that our own innermost experience leads us outward to connect.

Gratitude is an impulse that creates a community, it’s my contribution to living with others. It doesn’t happen to me as a solo Ronin meditator practicing the dark arts of consciousness alone in a hut. Because of this and because other people are always doing unexpected things, gratitude has to confront anti-gratitude, bitterness, and despair. If we want to speak for gratitude we have to go down into desolation,damage, and hurt and find space to breathe exactly there. In that way gratitude is a path, as much as a feeling; it asks me to look where I’m putting my feet.

Gratitude is what we feel for every single thing that occurs since we would rather be alive than not, would rather be here than not and perhaps our only job is to celebrate being here, being happy for each other.