When No Thing Works: Five Stages of Dharma Practice
Photo by Jan Huber
At this moment of uncertainty and upheaval, when we can’t see a path forward, it’s easy to feel paralyzed, unsure of how to take the next step. But, as Zuisei says, quoting Zen teacher Norma Wong Roshi, it is precisely when “everything feels and looks like a jumble at the edge of a precipice” that we’re best poised for transformation.
In this talk, Zuisei examines how we might use a moment of crisis to make such a leap, transforming the way we see this life and, crucially, how we live it—finding personal liberation and translating it into everyday compassionate action. Zuisei breaks down the work of transformation into five phases, emphasizing the importance of precision and not-knowing. So, when we find ourselves on a threshold, we meet the moment not by grasping for certainty but by letting go. Draws on Ursula K. Le Guin, Zen Master Daitō Kokushi, the Vinaya, and the koan of the Seven Wise Sisters in the Charnel Ground (Hidden Lamp Case 9).
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
When No Thing Works
From When No Thing Works by Norma Ryuko Kaweloku Wong Roshi:
There is a maddening amount of falling apartness in the universe—so much so that even the intrepid are daunted, attached to the pain and to our plans, and just overwhelmed by the urgency of defense.
This I observe as I stand—or crouch—in the median strip of applied spirituality. In transformational work, it is the crisis that opens the way for big leaps. When things are going relatively well, there is no need to question, and not enough energy to force the momentum of inconvenient stretches. As ironic as it may seem, it is hopeful for humankind that everything feels and looks like a jumble at the edge of a precipice… And from this threshold, the biggest of leaps.
2025 came thundering in. Globally and individually there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of upheaval. It’s not always easy to know how much to take in, how to respond. Religion/a spiritual path must show us how to live, and further, how to live well. It must show us how to lay down a brick, and the one after it.
Photo by Littlehampton Bricks
Most of you know this is a reference that I make with some frequency to a story by Ursula K. Le Guin which I love called “Things”. It begins at the moment where things stop being what we know them to be, at the threshold of what some people call the end of the world. A bricklayer by the name of Lif dreams of a distant set of islands beyond the range of what he can see, so he hasn’t really seen them with his eyes, with his senses, but he dreams of them, and he intuits with a certainty that surprises even him that his salvation is in these islands, and he decides he needs to get there somehow. The only way that he knows how to do this is to make a road. As a bricklayer this is what he decides to do, but he’s at the edge of the ocean. So without really knowing exactly what he's doing, certainly without knowing where the road is going to lead him or if he will be able to get there or if he’s really just going to his death, he builds this road straight into the ocean. I’ve always loved that image because he just has this absolute faith that this is something that he must do. Again, he cannot know where it's going to take him, but he knows this is something that he has to do. And really all of life is like this.
We don’t really know where the path is taking us, but we trust, based on what we see and live with each step, that it’s a true path, and that it’ll take us to the place we want to be: the place of liberation, the place where suffering is not the norm, where conflict is not widespread, starting with us, of course. Our spiritual path, to be a true path, must support us as we do the hard work of living as a being interconnected with everything else, with absolutely everything else there is. It must support us as we try to act in such a way that we don’t create more suffering, for ourselves, for the people we’re close to, and for those who are far away.
I believe I said in a recent talk that our practice is world building. Like in the Le Guin story, we face the end of the world—the old world, the world of samsara—and devote ourselves to the building of a new, functioning world where the beacons are not the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance, but the three virtues of generosity, compassion, and wisdom.
The quote I read is by Norma Wong Roshi, as I mentioned, an 86th generation Zen master, legislator, policymaker, storyteller, poet. I told my teacher friends, with whom I’m reading this book, how I would love to meet her in person.
An 86th generation Zen teacher? I think our own lineage chart—the male lineage chart—has 86 names, going all the way back to the time of the Buddha. Maybe that’s what she means. Or maybe her family is an unbroken line of Zen masters, which would be quite extraordinary. Either way, she’s extraordinary, as far as I can tell from her book. Someone who’d dedicated her life to living more sanely with land and community.
I liked very much how she describes herself as standing on the median of applied spirituality. In one sense, all spirituality should be applied spirituality, since abstract spirituality does not transform, doesn’t deliver, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like having a map that doesn’t match the topography. It might make for a nice wall hanging, but little more than that. So, spirituality should be applied spirituality, implicitly. On the other hand, I think it’s useful and important to make explicit the necessity of ensuring that this is so—that the path we’re on actually leads to transformation. That we make sure our practice is relevant and applicable to all aspects of our lives
You know of my own insistence that we do the work of translating the dharma, as it were, so that we can use it every day and in every way. And I think of this work as having five parts: Study (which includes realization), translation, integration, practice, expression. And we can think of these five parts or five stages applying to formal dharma practice, and also to all living—because, after all, dharma is reality.
So we make our way through these five stages like climbing down a spiral staircase. The more we study and practice, the deeper we go into our own being, our own mind. Each time we get to a teaching, each time we meet a dharma we’ve met before it is not the same, and neither are we. We’ve gained depth and time and experience, and the combination of these has hopefully led to insight: we’re able to see a little more of what we couldn’t see. But this staircase isn’t actually just a spiral; it’s also like one of those Escher stairs. Each one of its parts leads to and joins with each other part, in a neverending web of connections. Study is practice, practice is integration, translation is expression, and expression requires study, etc.
Dharma Study
So, study, which isn’t really study. We think of study and we think books, we think tests, we think concepts and meanings and right and wrong answers. But this kind of study isn’t like that at all. It’s like immersion. In order to see reality, in order to express reality, we have to let it permeate our whole being. For example, I can offer you the most poetic, most evocative description of the bliss that is that first sip of milky tea in the early morning; the lights of cargo ships waiting to enter the Panama canal in the distance; the gliding lights of the planes approaching Tocumen airport; the contented sigh of my dog, Lucas, at my feet; the touch of the ocean breeze on my skin. And that description will not come close to the actual Mmmh of it. It won’t come close to the isness of it.
In order to know what I mean, you have to feel it yourself, you have to be it yourself. But how do you do that if you’re not sitting here in Panama with me?If you don’t drink milk, don’t even like tea? Doesn’t matter. Don’t we know from our study that everything is interconnected? That you and I are interconnected, are in fact, one thing. And doesn’t it follow from this that you can experience what I experience, taste that tea, feel that breeze, if you let go of the thought that separates us—the thought that says, “I’m not this”?
We truly do have to become empty vessels in order to receive the dharma. Anything we know takes up space, and that’s space where the dharma can’t penetrate. It’s like trying to dye a piece of clothing that’s all tied up in knots. We know what happens when we do that: it comes out tie-dyed. The dye can’t get into the fabric that has been knotted up. Well, think of a thought as a knot—the ink, can’t get in there, and the fabric doesn’t transform.
So, dharma study is the untying of knots. It’s an unbinding. I’ve always loved that term, which the Buddha used to describe liberation. This is a liberation of sorts, a tiny liberation. The unbinding of everything we think we know and that gets in the way of true knowing, which is liberation. But how do you study like this? You practice letting the fabric be, not tying it into knots. You sit with a question, you wake up with the question, and it’s there in your mind as you take a shower, as you make yourself breakfast. And then a thought pops up, “It’s this!” Ooops! Knot, smooth it out, smooth it out—sever the myriad streams of notions. Am I sure? Let me find out.
The reason doubt is one of the three pillars of Zen is because it supports the kind of not knowing we need on the path. In transformational work, it is the crisis that opens the way for big leaps, Wong Roshi said. The crisis of faith, the crisis of confidence, the crisis of understanding. What’s the next step? Which way do I go? If I set down this brick, will it hold? We don’t know and because we don’t know, we have to trust. We have to trust what we can’t yet see (this is the definition of faith). We have to trust the dharma, and our capacity to practice it—now, when it’s hard, because we did it when it was easy.
You know: it’s not our ignorance that stops us; it’s our knowledge—which, in Buddhism, is just another form of ignorance. As my teacher said recently, it’s not that we don’t know, is that we know a lot—but wrongly. That’s what delusion is: knowing too much for our own good.
There’s a teacher that I’ve always loved, a very well known Zen teacher, Daitō Kokushi (大燈國師). The emperor had called him to serve as an advisor to the court, to be a kind of spiritual advisor, and this Zen teacher did not want to do that, so he took up his robes and went to live under a bridge, living like a vagrant trying to go under the radar. The emperor calls one of his officers and says, “I’ve heard this teacher loves watermelons so go out there on the streets one afternoon with a cart full of watermelons, and then whenever you see one of these guys under the bridge, just offer them a watermelon. When one of them approaches, say to him, ‘Take this watermelon without using your hands,’ and the guy who will be able to respond, that’s the teacher. Grab him and bring him.”
So the officer goes under the bridge where the Zen Master is, and he hears the officer proclaiming, “Free watermelons!” So he comes out and he’s really happy. The officer has the watermelon in his hand, the Zen Master’s about to take it, and the officer says, “Take this watermelon without using your hands,” and without missing a beat the Zen Master says, “Give it to me without using your hands.” They nabbed him. [Zuisei laughs] He had to go to the court.
But there’s another way to respond, give me the watermelon without using your hands, speak the truth without opening your lips. These aren’t puzzles: these aren't games; it’s actually as serious as life and death. You have to stop knowing in order to really see. When you do, you’ll know how to meet a person whose views you might consider hateful. You know how to respond when at your feet a chasm opens, taking with it a loved one or your job or your health or your identity.
2. Translating the Teachings
This is where a bit of translation is useful—or transliteration, which is not exactly the right term, but comes close to what I mean. Transliteration is the act of writing or printing “(a letter or word) using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or script”. So, the Japanese term Zen is the transliteration of the Chinese Chan and the Sanskrit dhyana, Pali jhana for meditation.
We study, we realize, and we transliterate the Buddhist teachings into a vocabulary for daily practice. You’ve seen my own way of doing that, sometimes i will take a traditional teaching, I will massage it a little bit, and I will create an acronym or I will create alliteration: Stop, Soothe, Shift; Attend Allow Accept; SWITCH (when I took the teaching from the Vitakkasanthana Sutta, on working with thoughts, unskillful signs, and I created an acronym SWITCH so I could remember it, and also because it makes it a little easier to teach it). This is my way of translating and integrating the dharma so in a moment when I am unsure of how to step I have something ready to turn toward, meaning something available to my mind. There's an endless array of ways of doing this very practically.
One of my friends had the Four Vows as her screensaver so every time she started up her computer or every time the computer went to sleep what she would see is the four vows, which was not accidental. Or I was talking to someone who was realizing that when they have all those open tabs, that that’s what they were doing with their mind, that's how they were splitting their attention. Even though they couldn’t see each one at the same time of course, but even the visual of it was splitting their attention. So they decided, Let me practice this. Shut everything down except the one or two that I need, start it up every time I need it. Perhaps even use a gatha or a mantra as you're waiting for the thing to boot up, to open. I actually had a friend who had a gatha for opening the refrigerator. She had a thing with food so she wanted to be very conscious every time she was approaching the “danger zone” so she created a gatha to open the refrigerator mindfully—a small thing with profound consequences.
Think of what this can do for all sorts of addictive behaviors. It’s going to take time. It's going to feel like a kalpa or two for things to transform, but this is how we do it—guided by the question: how do I work with my mind? This mind? Zuisei’s mind, which is sneaky and wily and very particular to Zuisei. How do I work with myself? Which of course goes into practice and integration.
3–4. Practicing and Integrating the Dharma
To know a lot about dharma doesn’t serve me. To know a little bit about how to put it to use, does. Here, repetition is helpful. Describing to someone a week at the monastery: “But you do the same thing every day!” Oh, but it’s not the same thing at all, not at all. Outwardly, some of the things we do might look the same from day to day, but in their doing, no two are the same—how could they be?
It’s like looking out at the vast ocean and saying, Ah, it’s all the same. Our certainty kills. It kills wonder, for sure, but it also kills our living. So how do we live so that each moment brings life into life? Lets life be life?
I was reading a commentary on the Vinaya, the monastic rule, and I had never seen this before (I don’t know why), but this time I stumbled across the reason why monastics in the Theravada school, so early Buddhism, were not allowed to work, particularly in agricultural jobs, so they weren’t allowed to till the land etc. I thought that they weren’t allowed to work, period, but it wasn’t a stricture against work. This was specifically against agricultural work because soil was and is considered a one-facultied life. And what that means is that it is one faculty, the faculty of touch. So they believed that soil is alive through touch. So soil is considered living, a very simple form of living, but living nonetheless. It wasn’t a prohibition against work per se; it was a prohibition against the taking of life. I was thinking, imagine truly living a life with this understanding, this view, of the sacredness of everything. I say this often because it is what I aspire to, very much so, and because in such a life everything is sacred. Nothing is throw-away. So, when all of what we see is alive—is animated with some form of life, then what is death? Is there in fact such a thing?
5. Expression in the Buddhadharma
A koan I’ve quoted before, of the Seven Sisters:
Seven wise sisters planned a spring journey. One of them said, “Sisters, instead of going to a park to enjoy the spring flowers, let’s go together to see the charnel grounds.”
The others said, “That place is full of decaying corpses. What is such a place good for?”
The first sister replied, “Let’s just go. Very good things are there.”
When they arrived, one of them pointed to a corpse and said,“There is a person’s body. But where has the person gone?”
“What?!” another said. “What did you say?”
At this, all seven sisters were immediately enlightened.
There’s the body, but where did the person go? What?!
How do we express what cannot be expressed conventionally? Well, we cannot do it conventionally. We have to find another way—this is what koans do. This is what life asks of us in moments when the conventional will not hold up, will not be enough to meet an unconventional moment. It’s one thing to read about loving-kindness, it’s another to grapple with it in your mind, as you contemplate offering this quality to someone you can’t abide. It’s one thing to hear that practicing it will help you first and foremost, and that it will help build a world—the kind of world we want to live in… It’s another to experience that for yourself.
So, in this way, expression in the buddhadharma is just another form of practice, another form of translation and integration. How do I communicate what I’ve seen and do so in such a way that someone else will also be able to see it? Not an easy task. Not an easy task, but doable. And so, a quality needed for this type of work, this process of practice and realization: precision—perhaps especially right now. What do I tend to and how? With life coming at me fast and furious, how do I hone my attention so I can most skillfully respond? Everything flows from attention, so this is the place to focus right now. To ask ourselves, What should I take up, what do I put down, since it won’t help me? What most needs my care and my love?
This is the last bit of a poem by Wong Roshi:
Something stirs
When no thing
Absolutely
No thing
Works
Something stirs
If
And only if
We see what cannot be seen
And hear what cannot be heard
A stance unfolds
A threshold appears
What?!”
What is insular is fragile—
a whole chain is much stronger than a single link.
Explore further
01 : Lovingkindness Paramita with Zuisei Goddard
02 : On Loving-Kindness with Zuisei Goddard
03 : When No Thing Works by Norma Kawelokū Wong
When No Thing Works, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard on the five stages of dharma practice—and all of life.