Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?

I remember the soft breeze. 

We sat on soft cushions on the grass beside the pool, a clear blue rectangle. Pelicans and other Florida zoo-birds flew over, making their way from ocean to lagoon, swooshing over the impossibly thin strip of land called Casey Key.  

Our teacher guided us into meditation: I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember trying to keep my attention at the point in the center of my head. 

I felt light, calm. My body felt easy, soft. 

We followed the teacher’s instructions for how to breathe, her encouragement to relax, to just watch the breath, feel the breeze. 

I don’t know how long we sat, but the memory of being there is clear, bright. The joy, the novelty, the feeling of having arrived.

---

West Cornwall, Connecticut, years later: 
 
I walked out of the interview room boiling with rage, frustration, humiliation; stupid koan practice, stupid teacher!

I stomped back to the zendo: a beautifully renovated barn, all finely crafted wood and windows, light and space, a growling heater in the corner.  
 
I HATE KOANS.

Hot tears ran down my face as the meditation retreat continued: we sat, walked, sat and walked. Thirty minutes sitting, ten minutes walking, endless.

I had been so sure I had the answer!
 
A koan is a little like a writing prompt, to which I am supposed to offer a response, something that reveals I ‘get it.’ 
 
In a Zen interview (known as Dokusan) you enter a room where your teacher is sitting. Typically, you bow upon entering and leaving. My teachers are not monks. They don’t wear robes, though sometimes the more formally-trained one wears a special sort of outfit, a loose, comfortable-looking black shirt with a band collar and matching pants, maybe silk?

My other teacher favors jeans and a sweatshirt. They provide a gentle yet firm presence in the room. Often there is laughter, then tears, sometimes rage.

Each time I’d walk into one of the interview rooms with some dread. 

I started with “Mu.” 

Mu is often the first koan Zen students are given.

On my first week-long silent retreat with this Zen group, my teacher read me the koan: “‘Does a dog have Buddha-nature?’ ‘Mu!’”

It was just the two of us in the interview room, which is really just an office in the big retreat house. The walls were covered with bookshelves.
 
I sat blankly, dumbfounded, in the wooden chair across from my teacher.

What? I thought.
 
My teacher suggested that I just carry “Mu!” with me. Bring it swimming, keep it with me while cleaning toilets, canning the peaches, talking to my husband, just “Mu!” (which is sort of like “No!”)
 
It took me two years to understand it (I think I understand it now).

I spent much of those two years wrestling with myself, thinking I had the “answer,” feeling mortified in interview after interview.
 
How do you REALLY show up in these interviews; what does it really mean to be authentic, real, genuine?  
 
If you go in there thinking you know the answer, usually you don’t.
 
I wanted to perform, to be applauded, liked. Actually, I wanted to be LOVED, to be told (and maybe convinced?) that I really WAS good enough.  
 
I approached my teachers again and again in these interviews, nervously, and sat in the opposite chair.

I gave my answers.
 
“That’s not quite what I’m looking for…”
“Naahh…” 
A small shake of the head, no.
 
Smoke poured out of my ears. I couldn’t seem to figure it out.  
 
I’d return to the zendo full of meditators in deep silence, eyes closed, backs straight, infuriated.
 
Everyone else seemed to have figured it out, but not me. I wondered about each of my fellow students, had she figured it out? Had he? How long did it take them? Which koans were they on now? (There are hundreds). We were in silence so I had no idea.  
 
Even after the retreat, when we were allowed to talk again, there seemed to be an unwritten code that said you never actually revealed which koan you were working on. It was sort of like talking about how much money you made.  
 
They say in Zen that you will try to use all the strategies of your life – your intellect, analysis, reason, calculation, determination, stubbornness, competitiveness, you name it – to understand/solve koans.  
 
All the things that may (or may not) have helped you to succeed during your life (in school, at work, even at home),  but have mostly just gotten in the way.
 
Put simply, there’s nowhere to hide.
 
Koan study is designed to help you meet yourself and your usual strategies for “success,” your narratives about yourself and your life, in the interview room.  
 
I met them all: rage, humiliation, frustration, “I’m a failure,” “I’m not good enough,” as I tried to “figure it out.” 
 
I pulled into the driveway after yet another week-long silent retreat, irritable, disappointed. “I hate koans!” I said to my husband as I walked in the door. 
 
“Then why do you do them?” He began to hate koans too. It wasn’t helpful.
 
Finally, after years of sitting and grudgingly letting this first koan soak its way into me, understanding began to creep in, like the light at dawn when you think “Is that the sun? Or does the room just seem a little less dark?”
 
Many, if not most, Zen students have a love-hate relationship with koans. 

Some koans are easy to love, others easy to hate, especially at first. 
 
Mostly now, when I make a koan presentation that my teacher doesn’t accept, I don’t mind staying with a koan for a while – though I still get dunked in humiliation and hear that persistent voice whispering, “You know, you’re really not good enough/loveable/worth anything.” 
 
Koans can keep you company as you sit in meditation, but I find that even more importantly, they keep me company in my life. “Aha!” happens at weird times, but usually not when you expect it or want it.
 
So I return to “Just this.” 
 
This moment, this breath… and this one, and this one…as I try to stay awake to my life as it is happening. The parts I like and those I don’t. To sit still in meditation and welcome everything.  
 
That’s the real challenge, welcoming everything!