A Profound Ordinariness
by Heather Townsend
This talk was inspired by a phrase in the Tale of Layman Pang and His Daughter. Layman Pang and his family renounced their wealth, and lived very ordinary lives. Devoted to the Way, they traveled from town to town, making bamboo utensils to sell to support themselves. At one point, Layman Pang is described as having “attained to a profound ordinariness”. This is a striking phrase. How does one “attain to” ordinariness? Is ordinariness something one should aspire to? Isn’t the “ordinary” boring and beige? Don’t we want to be extraordinary, not ordinary?
This is a good example of the paradoxical language Zen uses to snap us out of our usual ways of thinking, and help us awaken to a new understanding. If we look at the way Layman Pang describes his life, we can understand a bit more what is actually meant by “ordinariness”:
"My daily activities are not unusual
I’m just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing.
In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict.
My supernatural power and marvelous activity:
Drawing water and chopping wood."
Layman Pang is saying that he lives in the moment, focused on his daily activities, whatever those are: making bamboo baskets, drawing water, chopping wood. As KoDo noted in her talk about Layman Pang, the character that means “ordinary” also means “timeless”. Layman Pang has cut off attachment to past and future, to desire and regret.
But isn’t it good to be “extraordinary”? What’s wrong with being a billionaire who gives millions to good causes? Nothing. The Gates Foundation has made wonderful things possible. But in Zen, “extraordinary” has a different meaning. It means that something has been added to the ordinary: extra ordinary. In Zen, ordinariness, without anything extra, is the desired condition.
The Zen masters come back again and again to the importance of ordinariness, the importance of living in the moment. Linji, or Rinzai, expressed this very memorably in The True Person of No Rank:
“Attention!” Linji said to the assembly, “There is a true person of no rank always going out and in through the portals of your face. Beginners who have not yet witnessed it, Look! Look!”
Then a monk came forward and said, “What is the true person of no rank?”
Linji got down from the seat, grabbed and held him. The monk HESITATED
and Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank—what a piece of dry crap he is!”
And before Thanksgiving, we discussed Dogen’s Instructions to the Cook, and how rolling up one’s sleeves is the dharma, and the Buddha exists in a leaf of lettuce. Dogen emphasizes how focused the cook must be of all of his actions, and how that focus is purifying and transformative : “Lifting a single piece of vegetable, make yourself into Buddha.”
Can we be grateful for every ordinary moment? We don’t understand how precious they are. Here’s an example from real life. I lived in Sarajevo in 1996 and 1997. Before the war, my Bosnian colleagues had lives a lot like ours: Jobs, university, summer vacations. And then very quickly all that went away. One colleague lived on the 19th floor of an apartment building with her mother, who couldn’t walk. The elevator stopped running early on in the war, so every day or so to get water she had to walk down 19 flights of stairs, take her buckets to a spring that was often targeted by snipers, and then climb 19 flights of stairs with full buckets. She did this for years. That was just one story.
My Bosnian friends taught me that the best day is a day when nothing happens: When you get up, have your coffee, go to work, come home, have dinner, talk with your family, watch TV, and go to bed. A perfectly ordinary day is priceless, and we should treasure and be grateful for every ordinary moment.
Am I saying that we shouldn’t care about being good at something, to pursue goals, to achieve? Not at all. Zen stresses the importance of rigor and discipline of both body and mind. Layman Pang was good at making utensils out of bamboo. The tenzo is good at feeding the monastery. Basho was a great poet. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. It’s all practice. Doing, and not thinking about the doing, just doing. We focus on the practice itself, not with any goal in mind, cutting off attachment to any thoughts of the future, and focus in the moment on the profoundly ordinary task before us.
Talking about practice brings us to zazen. Zazen is the heart of our practice, and as KoDo Sawaki said, “Zazen is good for nothing.” Meaning, we don’t sit in order to attain anything. This is especially true when we practice “shikantaza”, or “just sitting”. We just chant. We just walk. There’s nothing extra. We drop off body and mind. When we sit we’re not trying to become “better” and we’re not trying to gain anything – we already have everything we need. We’re take the backward step and turn the light to shine within. Layman Pang and Linji practiced zazen regularly, and that practice helped them to attain to ordinariness.
Reflecting on the idea of ordinariness also leads to reflection on the idea of self. The idea of being “extra” ordinary comes at least in part from a delusion that we are separate beings not connected with others, and that we exist apart from and relative to others. But our lives are not our own in this way; as with the squabbling squashes who learned to practice zazen, we’re all connected to one another and indeed to everything, including the inanimate world. So the little things, the ordinary things, matter. Telling a stranger putting up lights that their Christmas decorations look beautiful; holding the door; lining up our shoes. All these little “ordinary” things align us harmoniously with the universe.
So the next time someone asks you what you did over the weekend, instead of trying to think up something impressive, say without any embarrassment “Nothing special”.
This is a good example of the paradoxical language Zen uses to snap us out of our usual ways of thinking, and help us awaken to a new understanding. If we look at the way Layman Pang describes his life, we can understand a bit more what is actually meant by “ordinariness”:
"My daily activities are not unusual
I’m just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing.
In every place there’s no hindrance, no conflict.
My supernatural power and marvelous activity:
Drawing water and chopping wood."
Layman Pang is saying that he lives in the moment, focused on his daily activities, whatever those are: making bamboo baskets, drawing water, chopping wood. As KoDo noted in her talk about Layman Pang, the character that means “ordinary” also means “timeless”. Layman Pang has cut off attachment to past and future, to desire and regret.
But isn’t it good to be “extraordinary”? What’s wrong with being a billionaire who gives millions to good causes? Nothing. The Gates Foundation has made wonderful things possible. But in Zen, “extraordinary” has a different meaning. It means that something has been added to the ordinary: extra ordinary. In Zen, ordinariness, without anything extra, is the desired condition.
The Zen masters come back again and again to the importance of ordinariness, the importance of living in the moment. Linji, or Rinzai, expressed this very memorably in The True Person of No Rank:
“Attention!” Linji said to the assembly, “There is a true person of no rank always going out and in through the portals of your face. Beginners who have not yet witnessed it, Look! Look!”
Then a monk came forward and said, “What is the true person of no rank?”
Linji got down from the seat, grabbed and held him. The monk HESITATED
and Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank—what a piece of dry crap he is!”
And before Thanksgiving, we discussed Dogen’s Instructions to the Cook, and how rolling up one’s sleeves is the dharma, and the Buddha exists in a leaf of lettuce. Dogen emphasizes how focused the cook must be of all of his actions, and how that focus is purifying and transformative : “Lifting a single piece of vegetable, make yourself into Buddha.”
Can we be grateful for every ordinary moment? We don’t understand how precious they are. Here’s an example from real life. I lived in Sarajevo in 1996 and 1997. Before the war, my Bosnian colleagues had lives a lot like ours: Jobs, university, summer vacations. And then very quickly all that went away. One colleague lived on the 19th floor of an apartment building with her mother, who couldn’t walk. The elevator stopped running early on in the war, so every day or so to get water she had to walk down 19 flights of stairs, take her buckets to a spring that was often targeted by snipers, and then climb 19 flights of stairs with full buckets. She did this for years. That was just one story.
My Bosnian friends taught me that the best day is a day when nothing happens: When you get up, have your coffee, go to work, come home, have dinner, talk with your family, watch TV, and go to bed. A perfectly ordinary day is priceless, and we should treasure and be grateful for every ordinary moment.
Am I saying that we shouldn’t care about being good at something, to pursue goals, to achieve? Not at all. Zen stresses the importance of rigor and discipline of both body and mind. Layman Pang was good at making utensils out of bamboo. The tenzo is good at feeding the monastery. Basho was a great poet. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. It’s all practice. Doing, and not thinking about the doing, just doing. We focus on the practice itself, not with any goal in mind, cutting off attachment to any thoughts of the future, and focus in the moment on the profoundly ordinary task before us.
Talking about practice brings us to zazen. Zazen is the heart of our practice, and as KoDo Sawaki said, “Zazen is good for nothing.” Meaning, we don’t sit in order to attain anything. This is especially true when we practice “shikantaza”, or “just sitting”. We just chant. We just walk. There’s nothing extra. We drop off body and mind. When we sit we’re not trying to become “better” and we’re not trying to gain anything – we already have everything we need. We’re take the backward step and turn the light to shine within. Layman Pang and Linji practiced zazen regularly, and that practice helped them to attain to ordinariness.
Reflecting on the idea of ordinariness also leads to reflection on the idea of self. The idea of being “extra” ordinary comes at least in part from a delusion that we are separate beings not connected with others, and that we exist apart from and relative to others. But our lives are not our own in this way; as with the squabbling squashes who learned to practice zazen, we’re all connected to one another and indeed to everything, including the inanimate world. So the little things, the ordinary things, matter. Telling a stranger putting up lights that their Christmas decorations look beautiful; holding the door; lining up our shoes. All these little “ordinary” things align us harmoniously with the universe.
So the next time someone asks you what you did over the weekend, instead of trying to think up something impressive, say without any embarrassment “Nothing special”.