Understanding Uchiyama’s ‘Opening the Hand of Thought’

Judging from what I’ve posted here recently, most of my faithful readers probably assume I’m spending all my time out birding or walking.

I wish that were true, but for better or worse, most of my time is still spent reading. Unfortunately, much of that time is devoted to keeping up with current “news,” and I refuse to pollute my site with politics, even though I started this site long ago to protest our invasion of Afghanistan.

I do occasionally read entire books, but I am finding it harder and harder to know what to say about the books I’m reading because I’m exploring areas I know very little about, like Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice by Kosho Uchiyama.

I’ve been meditating semi-regularly for over 40 years now. I started by doing gentle yoga poses for half an hour, then switching to a Hindu OM (Aum) chanting meditation for another 30 minutes to relieve stress and sleep better. I practiced this form of meditation until I discovered Taoism in graduate school and switched to Mindfulness, generally focusing on my breathing.

More recently, I switched to Muse and have now meditated for 25,959 total minutes in 2,100 sessions. Muse offers a lot of different kinds of meditation, though I generally find myself falling back on Mind Meditations that focus on the breath.

Kindle suggested that Opening the Hand of Thought was similar to other books I’ve read lately, and the title grabbed me. I downloaded the sample and was hooked. Uchiyama offered a different way of looking at meditation—zazen—one that raised some of the same questions about the value of thinking that I’ve been exploring recently.

Anyone who meditates for any length of time realizes how constantly the mind churns out thoughts, whether or not they are relevant to what you’re doing. I suspect it is impossible, at least for me, to meditate without random thoughts popping up regularly. Different teachers offer different ways of dealing with those thoughts.  

Early on, Uchiyama reveals how important dealing with these random thoughts is to his philosophy:


Dwelling here and now in this reality, letting go of all the accidental things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by “opening the hand of thought.”


Of course, if it were easy to do this, Uchiyama wouldn’t need a book to explain the concept. He emphasizes the importance of using both body and mind in freeing the mind from thoughts/judgements. 


By aiming at the zazen posture and simultaneously opening the hand of thought, both body and mind do zazen in the proper spirit. Zazen is not something we think about doing wholeheartedly—it is something we actually practice.


Zazen is sitting in awake awareness, allowing thoughts to come and go while repeatedly returning to the immediate reality of being alive, without trying to gain anything from the practice.


“No gaining, no knowing” is the attitude of refraining from all fabrication. In other words, it means to be free from the ideas we make up in our head. I call this opening the hand of thought.

This concept of “no gaining, no knowing” is one of the hardest concepts to wrap my mind around — though it seems the mind isn’t supposed to be any “wrapping.”  No gaining seems to suggest that we shouldn’t meditate to alleviate stress, manage anxiety, improve focus, sleep better, etc. All reasons I started meditating so long ago.

The point of zazen is to free ourselves from “illusions that create desire, anger, and group stupidity.”


How can we awaken from these illusions? The only way is to open the hand of thought, because our thoughts themselves are the source of illusion. When we let go of our thoughts and become vividly aware, all the illusions that create desire, anger, and group stupidity vanish immediately. This is the way of awareness. We must neither fall asleep nor get carried away by our thoughts. The essential point in zazen is to be vividly aware, opening the hand of thought.

I think most people would want to get rid of group stupidity and anger, but I’m less sure they would want to get rid of desire. 

According to Uchiyama, what we are left with once we free ourselves from those kinds of thoughts is “enlightenment”  — though perhaps not quite the kind of enlightenment that most seekers expect.


The only true enlightenment is awareness of the vivid reality of life, moment by moment. So we practice enlightenment right now, right here, in every moment. This attitude is expressed in the phrase “practice and enlightenment are one” (shush? ichinyo). It is an essential point of D?gen Zenji’s teaching not to obtain enlightenment as a result of practice, but to be vividly aware and to open the hand of thought from moment to moment, because it is our thought that binds us. You should understand this true enlightenment of buddhadharma. Enlightenment is not like a sudden realization of something mysterious. Enlightenment is nothing but awakening from illusions and returning to the reality of life.


It’s easy to see that “it is our thought that binds us,” but it’s still not easy to see the “reality of life.”  I guess I’ll have to keep reading to discover that reality.  Or not. There’s the paradox. And the irony.

Discovering the Beauty of Oregon’s Oswald West State Park

Although I would have been happy just walking the beach in front of rental every day we were there, the rest of the group wanted to hike in Oswald West State Park, which was just a few miles down the road.

Once we started walking the old-growth trail to the beach I was glad they had persuaded me to come. It reminded me a lot of the rain forests of Olympic National Park.

Here life and death are irrevocably linked, death giving birth to life timelessly.

The end of the forested trail opens up an impressive cove

and sea caves

It was impossible not to be impressed by this magnificent cove, much larger than the small cove by our rental, but the downside was that it also attracted too many people for my taste, as evidenced by the overflowing parking lots at the trailhead.

Back to the Oregon Coast

Although we haven’t vacationed on the Oregon Coast for the last few years, I’ve visited it regularly since 1967. So, when Jen asked us if we’d like to join her at Arch Cape for a week at the beach, I quickly agreed, especially since we would be joining Logan and Hannah. Arch Cape is just a few miles south of Cannon Beach, a tourist destination I used to visit regularly when I lived in Vancouver.

I’m not sure I’ve ever walked the beach at Arch Cape before, but it certainly has all the characteristics I identify with the Oregon Coast, like these rocky headlands with sea caves.

If I was willing to jump/wade a few streams, I could walk a mile and a half to an even more impressive outcropping and cave.

One day when we hiked this the tide was way out, and it was possible to walk around the headlands all the way to Cannon Beach.

Luckily, at 84 I had better sense than to try that and settled with examining the small tide pools at the base of the outcropping and turning back.

We did a very different hike on another day — hiking an old-growth forest at Oswald West State Park — but I hiked this beach four days of the five days we were there and felt better every day I hiked it. It’s almost as if the ocean’s ebb and flow is Nature’s way of putting us in touch with our Chi.

Back to Belfair

Local birding is usually slow this time of year, so I wasn’t surprised that I spent most of my time during my recent visit to Theler Wetlands listening to birds rather than actually seeing them.

I didn’t mind too much, though, because most of the day I was immersed in a world of green

occasionally highlighted with brilliant white flowers breaking the shadows

and delicate purple flowers trying to catch rays of sunlight that penetrated the green canopy.

That’s not to say that I didn’t see any birds. I did see a few, and some of them even posed for the camera, like this Barn Swallow

and these Cliff Swallows.

The only disappointing part of the day was learning that John Riegsecker had recently moved and was no longer birding the area two or three times a week. Seeing him and catching up on the latest information about the wetlands was always a highlight of my visits to Theler.