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PeterParticipantThomas, your insight into the second arrow is beautiful, but notice the subtle trap in your closing words: “Just got to let it go,” “I still work on myself,” and especially, “easier said than
I felt the sting of the third arrow hidden right there in those words…
The phrase “easier said than done” is a room that language builds to trap us. It implies there is a massive mountain of physical effort required to reach peace turn a concept of non-action into a grueling chore. But the work that requires no work is simply realization. The moment you realize your hand is on a hot stove, you don’t say, “Taking my hand off is easier said than done.” The realization is the opening of the hand.
When we say it is hard, notice our words harden into concepts. The ego happily hides inside that spiritual struggle, pretending it is going to fix a mind that isn’t actually broken. We don’t do letting go; we stop carrying the arrow.
There is a profound cosmic irony here: it is never the raw experience of life that traps us, but the language we use to describe it. Reality is fluid like water, but language freezes it into ice. I’ve found that avoiding this funny sad trap of language, that noticing words like ‘just’ and ‘easer said’ and holding them lightly… has helped the fire go out.
Master Shuzan held up his short bamboo staff before his students and said: “If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now, what do you call it?”
A monk asked Master Nansen, “Is there a teaching that has not been given to the people?
“Nansen replied: “It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not a thing.”Master Kyogen said: “Zen is like a man hanging from the branch of a tree by his teeth over a precipice. His hands cannot grasp a bough, his feet cannot reach a limb. Someone stands beneath the tree and asks him: ‘Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?’ (What is the ultimate truth of Zen?) If the man does not answer, he fails his duty. If he opens his mouth to answer, he falls to his death. What should he do?
The Wordless space before thoughts and labels are created… my own response to the koans – is to hold words lightly..
Our thoughts arrive wearing borrowed cloths, speaking in languages we never chose.
Long before we awaken, words are already dreaming us.Once every word was alive, A spark. A gesture toward the unsayable.
But images harden and we begin mistaking the map for the mountain,
the symbol for the pulse beneath it.
We wonder inside these rooms of language believing they are the world…Language rises as mist, before the mind wakes.
Words form and dissolve: shadows toughing light.
Thoughts builds its small rooms, naming each wall “me”
Yet in silence between breaths, seer is seeing…
Concepts loosen, Transparency returns.
Language, released from definition, become a gesture…
A leaf on a river, moving always, needing no name.And the arrows, fall to the ground, in silence…
PeterParticipantA young monk named Jiro sat by the monastery pond, his face twisted in frustration. He was skipping stones, but instead of letting them glide, he threw them with angry, violent jerks.
The Master, watching from the bamboo grove, walked over and sat on a nearby rock. “Jiro, you are not skipping stones. You are attacking the water. What troubles you?”Jiro sighed, dropping his remaining stones. “Yesterday, during the village festival, I tripped and spilled a bowl of hot broth all over a merchant. He cursed at me, and everyone laughed. My knee still burns from the hot soup.”
The Master nodded. “That is the first arrow. A painful event, an accident of life. It strikes the flesh.”
“But it didn’t stop there,” Jiro continued, his voice rising. “I spent the entire night awake in my room. I kept replaying the moment. I felt the shame all over again. I grew furious at the merchant for yelling, and furious at the villagers for laughing. I couldn’t sleep.”“That is the second arrow,” the Master said softly. “The event was over, but you used your own mind to shoot yourself again. The first arrow hurt your knee; the second arrow hurt your peace.”
Jiro looked down, his fists clenching. “I know! I knew it while it was happening! I told myself, ‘You are a Zen monk, you shouldn’t be this angry. Why are you letting a stupid mistake ruin your night? You are failing your training.’ I fought so hard to force the anger out of my mind, but the more I fought it, the louder it got. Now I am just disgusted with myself for being so weak.”
The Master smiled gently and picked up a stone. “And that, Jiro, is the third arrow.”
“The third arrow?” Jiro asked.“Yes. You became angry that you were angry. You suffered because you were suffering. You shot the third arrow of judgment into your own wound, punishing yourself for being human. You tried to fight the darkness with a sword, which only exhausted you and gave the darkness shape.”
Jiro looked at the Master, the tension leaving his shoulders. “Then what should I have done when the second arrow struck? How do I let it go?”
The Master tossed his stone. It skipped smoothly across the pond, creating gentle, widening ripples.
“Do not fight the ripple,” the Master said. “When a memory arises, do not try to push it away, and do not judge yourself for feeling it. Simply look at it and say, ‘Ah, there is a ripple.’ If you do not strike the water with a third arrow, the pond will return to stillness all by itself.”
PeterParticipantHi Caroline,
Thank you for having the courage to express your experience so honestly, and for inviting us to share what we feel.“I am not the person I used to be”… that is a phrase I’ve sat with many times myself, sometimes in grief and sometimes in quiet gratitude…
In my own life, when I feel like the landmarks I relied on are gone, I tend to panic, feeling as though the entire landscape beneath me has been destroyed. It has taken a lot of time (a lot) to realize that even when my old ways of navigating life messiness break down, the ground beneath my feet is still there… During that lasted experience wondering about the person I am I wrote in my journal: We are map-makers by nature. The Tao (Way) is the realization that the map-maker is also part of the territory. Every time we “return”, whether through a lifetime work or a moment of “seeing”, we are the Tao waking up to itself…. I’m not always able to lean into that, but sometimes…
Richard Wagamese wrote something about life’s friction that has meant a lot to me when things feel torn apart:
life is sometimes hard. There are challenges. there are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man, I sought to avoid pain and difficulty and only caused myself more of the same. These days, I choose to face life head-on and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life and the hard times are the friction that shaves off the worn and tired bits. The more I travel head-on, the more I am shaped, and the things that no longer work or are unnecessary drop away. It’s a good way to travel. I believe eventually I will wear away all resistance, until all that’s left of me is light. – Embers
“I arc across the sky of my life…” I love that image even though… well something to aim for… and I wonder if anything is really lost in that light…
I don’t have answers for the weight you’re carrying, but I really appreciate you sharing where you are at.
PeterParticipantTodays Richard Wagamese Meditation seems appropriate
Me: Tell me about love.
Old Woman: It is our only real choice. The only thing that we can truly give.
Me: How do we do that?
Old Woman: Choose it above all else. Love is you leading me back to the highest possible version of myself. It’s me leading you back to who you were created to be. It is the most important choice we can make for each other.
Me: Those closest to us, you mean.
Old Woman: No everyone. Everything. Widening your circle at every opportunity.
Me: Sounds hard.
Old Woman: So is being born. But we all do it.PeterParticipantSo, I don’t have to do anything to earn love. I already am. 🙏 I also will rest in that…
PeterParticipantAnita, that is the exact same question I found myself asking: *What if I could see that in people, more often…?*
It has also led me to a second question as I enter the fourth quarter of life. What if I’ve been asking the wrong things all along? For so long, the questions have been: *What will I do?* and *How will I do it?*
Perhaps the truer question is simply: **How do I wish to Be?**
I wonder if we anchor ourselves in that state of *Being* first, in that dropped-luggage presence, the *what* and the *how* will resolve themselves naturally.
PeterParticipantThanks Alessa that was nice to hear.
Hi Anita – thanks for the invitation to answer or not, to be candid its a question I often ponder and suspect its something that can only be answered-experienced for ourselves, a answer that likely can’t be defined by words.
Your question “Without any heavy bags, not even an ounce of a heavy bag, who would you be now Peter?” arrived as I was reflecting on an experience I had over the weekend.
I was talking with someone who was caught up in their stories, tangled in frustration because their love/words were getting distorted and coming out and received in ways they didn’t intend. But as I sat there and really, truly listened, something shifted. The words they were using became ‘transparent’. For a moment beneath the noise of their defense and baggage, I “saw” them. I saw how much love they held, how deeply they wanted to express it, and just how beautiful they were, if they could only ‘know’ it. My heart broke… open.
And that’s when it happened to me, too.
When their words became transparent to me, my own luggage slipped to the floor. I didn’t vanish; instead, my own rigid boundaries dissolved… allowing grace to shine through…
“When we drop the luggage of our defensive words, we finally arrive “Home.” We step into that collective “now” beating in our chests, where we can engage in the simplest things with what we finally recognize as love.”
Without any heavy bags, not even an ounce of a heavy bag, who would you be now, Peter? … I would Be. Love, Presence
PeterParticipantI have to laugh at myself reading back through this. I taken Richards soft and gentle words and treat this putting down of luggage as some monumental, difficult spiritual exercise. Yet, when we return home from a long trip, we naturally just drop our bags on the floor, slump against the wall, and eventually unpack them. Handling the contents one by one, calmly, until the suitcase is empty and slid under the bed out of sight.
It isn’t a grand technique; it’s just the natural movements of coming home. Thank you all for sitting on the floor with me for a bit.
PeterParticipantAnita 🙏 😊
PeterParticipant“We are map-makers by nature. The “Way” a realization that the map-maker is also part of the territory. Every time we “return”, whether through a lifetime work or a moment of “seeing”, we are just the Tao waking up to itself.”
Once, every word was alive. A spark. A gesture toward the unsayable… Language rising like mist before the mind wakes. Words form, dissolve, return, shadows trying to touch the light…. Watching the watcher quietly, you can see thought building its small rooms, naming each wall as “me.”… Yet… in the stillness between one word and the next, there is a different kind of knowing, the space between seeing and seer dissolves… fear softens, concepts loosen. The soul reminds of its own transparency…
And language, freed from its duty to define, becomes a simple gesture, a leaf floating on a river that was always moving without needing a name
PeterParticipantThank you, Alessa.
Perhaps the nuance is knowing when to put the map down. We need it to find the ocean, but we don’t carry it into the water when we swim.Thomas, you caught it exactly. The thought that we have “failed” at sitting is heavy piece of luggage. Yet the floor remains beneath us.
PeterParticipantThank you all.
I’m realizing that if I try to list what I’m dropping, or try to measure whether this home is positive or negative, I’m packing new bags to carry.
Thomas asked if it feels good to be home. The truth is, the moment I try to label the feeling, it slips into form… and the shadow slumping in the corner starts to get up.
So I think I’m just going to sit here quietly on the floor for a while, next to the luggage, and listen to the room…
PeterParticipant“You don’t need to define the sky to live under it. You just have to be willing to sit still long enough to belong to it.” Anonymous
PeterParticipantHi 🚶♀️ Anita,
It’s powerful to hear how you’ve reclaimed your ability to move and become ‘the walker’ in your own life. We all have different ways of relating to and finding the ground beneath us. I’m glad you found a way to stand and keep moving forward.PeterParticipant🌄 Anita – to close the loop
It is the great irony of the human condition: we work tirelessly for that which no work requires. We treat being present (and so love) as a destination to be reached, a ‘how-to’ to be mastered, forgetting that the question itself is a measure of time, while ✨️presence✨️ is eternal. We are already the canvas; we are already the still point.
As T.S. Eliot suggested, the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Perhaps ‘unconditional love’ is simply the name we give to that arrival. When we stop trying to ‘be’ present and simply recognize that we are presence, the burden of performance vanishes. Language, with all its metrics and conditions, finally falls away. We are no longer managing a relationship or meeting a standard; we are simply home. We have returned to the origin, seeing for the first time that the love we were trying to achieve was actually the ground we were standing on all along.
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