Wuzu, teacher of Yuanwu who compiled the Blue Cliff Record, said this about "Vast emptiness, nothing holy":
"If you can just see into this vast emptiness, nothing holy, then you can return home and sit in peace."
"If you can just see into this vast emptiness, nothing holy, then you can return home and sit in peace."
Return home. Sit in peace. It's vast like the night sky last night blazing with stars, blazing with ten billion bright particulars.
(All text from Susan Murphy, see Notes below)
And don't be misled by "nothing holy," don't fail to hear the fire running through it.
There is a fire that runs through all things and "nothing holy" is the road to seeing it.
Curiously if nothing indeed is holy, then everything is endowed with completeness, sacredness; everything matters.
There is nothing that is not sacred. All is blessed. Everything counts.
Can you feel how this is so?
Where does it leave you in the actual living of your life?
How do you meet this “nothing holy"?
How do you meet this quality of It is Unknown.
How do you meet this quality of It is Unknown.
There is Unknownness, right here.
— Susan Murphy Roshi is founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia. Her latest book is A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis. Words above from her essay "A Thousand Miles the Same Mood" in the edited volume The Book of Mu (James Ishmael Ford and Melissa Myozen Blacker, eds.)
— Photos: A small spring and rock rim in SE Oregon’s High Lakes country east of Warner Basin, May 2026, Douglas Beauchamp. With gratitude to fellow travelers Bryan Andresen and Phil Gordon. Return home. Sit in peace.
