How do you know?

Not too long ago, I was reading an article that mentioned Tucker Zimmerman’s recent death, and several musicians I admire and listen to regularly said he was their favorite folk artist. Naturally, I had to check out his music on Apple Music and ended up buying Zimmerman’s I Wonder if I Will Ever Come True. My favorite song on the album is:

When I like a song I usually search online and download the lyrics:

Once upon a time, a farmer sent his son
With a horse to graze upon the mountainside.
He fell asleep; when he awoke, the horse was gone.
Came back without it; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what bad luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

The very next day, the farmer sent his son
Back into the mountains to seek the runaway.
He found the horse and seven other wild ones.
He brought them home and the neighbour said:
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

On the very next day, the farmer sent his son
To the wild horses that needed to be tamed.
First one he climbed on, it threw him down to the ground.
It broke his arm; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what bad luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

The very next day, a war was declared,
And the army men came through the countryside
Looking for soldiers, but they couldn’t take anyone
With a broken arm; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?”

I’d never heard this song before, but the story seemed very familiar. I searched for a similar story through my two Chuang Tzu books but couldn’t find it there. At 84, I certainly don’t have a good enough memory to remember where I had originally encountered it, so I turned, once again, to ChatGPT which dutifully returned:


Tucker Zimmerman’s “Taoist Tale” is a retelling of the famous Chinese parable usually called “The Farmer and the Horse,” “The Old Man Who Lost His Horse,” or “The Story of the Taoist Farmer.”

With that information I was able to find this,

Sai Weng Shi Ma refers to a famous story from the Huai Nan Zi about how difficult it is to foresee the twists and turns that result in misfortune turning into fortune, and fortune leading to misfortune.

There once was an old man skilled in divination, who lived by the border of a hostile country,

One of his horses strayed into the foreign lands and did not return. The neighbors consoled him for his loss.  But the old man said, “Why should I assume this is not a good thing?”

After several months, the horse came back from the land of the Xiongnu, accompanied by another fine horse! Everyone congratulated the old man (it appears he is fortunate indeed!)  His family had a wealth of fine horses, and his son loved riding them.

Yet the old man said, “How can we be hastily conclude this is fortunate?”

One day, the son fell off the horse, and broke his leg, and again, everyone consoled the old man. But the father said, “Why should I hastily assume that this is an unfortunate event?”

One year later, a war began, and all able-bodied men took up arms and went to war. Of the men from his town, nine out of ten died.  It was only because of the son’s broken leg, that he did not fight.  The father and son were spared the greatest tragedy.

Therefore, misfortune begets fortune, and fortune begets misfortune. This goes on without end, and its depths can not be measured.

The farmer’s refusal to make a judgment in the first place is very close to the Taoist distrust of rigid distinctions—fortunate/unfortunate, success/failure, gain/loss. Events continue changing, so our judgment of them is based on an arbitrarily chosen stopping point. Zimmerman actually preserves that idea unusually well. He does not end by saying, “See, the broken arm was really a blessing.” The neighbor again calls it good luck, and the farmer again asks, “How do you know?

Uchiyama’s Opening the Hand of Thought made me recall this song. The song seemed to offer a clear example of “opening the hand of thought.” The problem is less the event itself than the mind immediately attaching a label to it—good, bad, fortunate, disastrous. Taoism says, in effect, that reality is still unfolding. Too often we judge events rather than just seeing them as they are.

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.