By: Tony Nguyễn Wiederhold
We recite this ancient conversation about The Way of No-Pretending to open every meditation. Below the recitation, you can find some background information and key lessons. It’s nice to recite it every day and listen for the words that pop for you today.
Ordinary Heart Is The Way – Script Version
Typically, different people volunteer to recite one of the three roles: Zhàozhōu, Nánquán, and the narrator. Zhàozhōu and Nánquán see one another during the recitation.
(Narrator) Let’s get ready. (Wait for everyone to be ready to sit.)
(Narrator) One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán:
(Zhàozhōu) “What is The Way?”
(Narrator) Nánquán said:
(Nánquán) “Ordinary heart is.”
(Zhàozhōu) “May it be pursued or not?”
(Nánquán) “If you seek it, you’ll never find it.”
(Zhàozhōu) “Well, if I don’t seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
(Nánquán) “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you sincerely live The Way of No Pretending, it’s just like the sky: wide open, wild, beyond imagination. How can you force it to be something it isn’t?”
(Narrator) At these words, Zhàozhōu fell awake. Their heart became serene, like the bright moon.
(Everyone bows, considering everyone who created a condition that allowed for us to receive this teaching. Once everyone has completed their bow…)
(Narrator) “Let’s begin.”
(This marks the beginning of the silent meditation practice period.)
Ordinary Heart Is The Way – Literature Version
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary heart is.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May it be pursued or not?”
Nánquán said, “If you seek it, you’ll never find it.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I don’t seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you sincerely live The Way of No Pretending, it’s just like the sky: wide open, wild, beyond imagination. How can you force it to be something it isn’t?”
At these words, Zhàozhōu fell awake. Their heart became serene, like the bright moon.
Key Lessons
Many people have written commentaries on this koan. The lessons I’ve written here are by no means comprehensive. Rather they are what I have learned from contemplation, practice, and experiment. Your own practice may reveal other things. Please allow for that.
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
You can learn a lot by asking a sincere question.
Nánquán said: “Ordinary heart is.”
Your ordinary heart is who you are when you’re not trying to be anyone, beyond everything on your heart: your ideas of who you are, who you “should be”, and who you were, your masks and appearances, your feelings, perceptions, impressions, and intellect.
“Heart” here does not mean “feelings” like it can in plain English. It’s your core, your Buddha Nature. “Ordinary” comes from the combination of 平 and 常, bình thường in Viet. Taken separately, 平 carries a meaning of “calm” and 常 carries a meaning of “unchanging”.
(Zhàozhōu said:) “May it be pursued or not?”
(Nánquán said:) “If you seek it, you’ll never find it.”
To seek something, your mind first creates an idea of what it is. An idea of something, though, is at best a reflection of a fragment of the truth of something. Ideas can also be (often are?) wrong. Nánquán is saying that if you chase after some idea of your true nature that your imagination creates, you will miss the real thing. The Chinese carries a meaning of: imagining it takes you away from it.
Note: the verb that Zhàozhōu uses is 趣 (run toward, take an interest in), but Nánquán replies using 擬 (imitate, pretend, imagine).
(Zhàozhōu said:) “Well, if I don’t seek it, how can I know about The Way?” (Nánquán said:) “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you sincerely live The Way of No Pretending, it’s just like the sky: wide open, wild, beyond imagination. How can you force it to be something it isn’t?”
The Way, and Ordinary Heart (Buddha Nature) cannot be grasped intellectually or with the imagination. It is beyond imagination, accessible only through the direct experience of living sincerely (e.g. through vows and practice).
“Knowing is fake enlightenment” is literal and true. “Knowing” here means conceptual knowing, having an idea about something and forgetting that the idea is at best only a partial truth. This sort of conclusion can lead one to close off and reject further understanding. Calcifying a wrong idea as truth leads to taking actions that seem right in a the world of the deluded view, but in reality result in bitterness and suffering.
“Not knowing is unremembering.” I’ve translated 無記 literally here. 無記 also refers to a set of 14 philosophical questions that the Buddha would not answer because they could not be answered with Right Speech and pondering them distracts from practice and liberation. Ordinary Heart, who you are when you’re not trying to be anyone, is not a philosophical question. It can be directly experienced and naturally expressed.
The Sky – 太虛 (Tài Xu)
Tài Xu does not refer to just the atmosphere, or the blue sky and clouds. It is a reference to the Grand Void, a Taoist idea of the source of all phenomena and limitless potentiality. When I imagine Nánquán telling Zhaozhou that truly living the Way of No-Pretending is just like Tài Xu, sometimes I imagine them gesturing to the brilliant, moonlit night sky, with all of the stars and streaking meteors overhead, now obscured by our city lights. Whenever we recite this, I look at the sky above me at that time. It is never the same twice.
The sky has no beginning or end. We and everything around us are part of it. This is what I think Nánquán was gesturing towards.
Background
How did the story find us?
My first contact with this story was via the book The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, translated by James Green (Shambala 1998) that Linc Rhodes of the Indianapolis Zen Center gave me. We were sitting outside enjoying scrambled eggs at my house in Indianapolis in the late spring of 2020, when the COVID pandemic was still new and devastating in the United States. We started reciting it before sitting sometime in 2022. There is another version in Wumen Guan (無門關, Japanese pronunciation Mumonkan), a classic koan collection compiled by Wumen Huikai in 1228 CE. At some point, I noticed that the endings of the two versions differ. The questions that I had about both that and how the translators arrived at their English word choices prompted my own work.
What we recite now is my translation from a Song Dynasty Chinese version of The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Zhàozhou ( 趙州禅師語録). All errors are my own. I obtained the Chinese from a 1964 text by Akizuki Ryomen, which is included below. This is the first recorded saying in the book. The various published English translations I obtained omit the Chinese source texts that they used. There have been many iterations of our translation that have emerged from both our daily study through recitation and deeper study of the text in both Middle Chinese and Sino-Viet.
Who were Zhàozhōu and Nánquán?
Ordinary Heart Is The Way is the story of 18 year old Zhàozhōu meeting his 46 year old teacher Nánquán. According to traditional birth years, this would have been 795 or 796 CE. It occurs shortly after Nánquán was encouraged by his teacher, Ancestor Ma (馬一, short for Mǎzǔ Dàoyī, 馬祖道一) to leave and follow his own path and settled on Nánquán Mountain in modern day Anhui province. Back then, it was common for monks to take the name of the land where they took root. Zhàozhōu stayed with Nánquán until Nánquán died 40 years later. He stayed there three more years before visiting various teachers and temples throughout the Tang empire. According to legend, he died at age 120 at Guan Yin Yuan, his temple in Hebei province, where he died in 897 CE.
Zhàozhōu and Nánquán appear in lots and lots of stories.
Zhàozhōu was a contemporary of Línjì Yìxuán (臨濟義玄, died in 866 CE), the founder of what is called in Japanese the Rinzai Zen sect. This Rinzai version of Zen is one big reason why these stories are still with us today, over a millennium later, in languages that didn’t exist and in places unknown to Zhàozhōu, Nánquán, and whoever wrote these stories down initially.
Timeline and Circumstances of the Two Chinese Versions
There are two main versions: one from The Recorded Sayings and the other from Wumen Guan. We recite the Recorded Sayings version. The Wumen Guan version omits the line about the bright moon at the end, includes a comment from the compiler Wu Men, and includes a verse which we call The Seasons Poem. We recite this poem to break silence at our retreats.
The writing of The Recorded Sayings began in 953 CE, a little more than a century and a half after the dialogue. This was during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a period of upheaval following the fall of the Tang Dynasty. Wumen Guan was first published in 1229 CE in the Southern Song dynasty, over four centuries after the dialogue and nearly three centuries after the writing of The Recorded Sayings was started. The publication occurred during the Song’s descent into a 40 year period of militarism and warfare with the Mongols that continued until the destruction of the Song in the 1270’s. This may be one reason that Wumen Guan took root in Japan in a way that it did not in the land where it was composed and published. The destruction of the Song Dynasty destroyed the support of the Chan schools that utilized koan practice, making way for the Tibetan Lamaist Buddhism favored by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty that took the place of the Song. The Mongols were never able to gain a foothold in Japan, and zen and koan practice flourished there for a while.
Most versions of Wumen Guan that I perused omitted a preface by Wumen Huikai indicating his position as former abbot of 報因佑慈禪寺 (Bào Yīn Yòu Cí Zen Temple), which he indicates was built for the merit of 慈懿皇后 (Empress Cíyì, the posthumous name of Empress Li Fengniang), the spicy de facto ruler of the Song Dynasty. A Japanese source places the temple in Huzhou, a city that was an administrative center near the Song capital of Hangzhou. According to the same source, Wumen Guan was brought to Japan by Shinichi Kakuchin (1207-1298), a Japanese who received dharma transmission from Wumen Huikai in Hangzhou in 1253 and returned to Japan in 1256 with a copy of Wumen Guan. Wumen Huikai died in 1260.
Chinese Source Text
趙州禅師語録 (Jōshūzenji Go-roku, Akizuki, 1964)
Akizuki evaluated many ancient versions of the text, but for this case chose a version from a Song Dynasty work called 古尊宿語錄.
師問南泉：如何是道。
泉云：平常心是。
師云：還可趣向不。
泉云：擬即乖。
師云：不擬爭知是道。
泉云：道不屬知不知。知是妄覺、不知是無記。若真
達不擬之道，猶如太虛，廓然蕩豁。豈可強是非也。
師於言下頓悟玄旨，心如朗月。
Previous Versions of Our Translation
August 2025
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary heart is.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May it be pursued or not?”
Nánquán said, “If you seek it, you’ll never find it.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I don’t seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you sincerely live The Way of No Pretending, it’s just like the sky: wide open, vast, beyond imagination. How can you say yes or no to it?”
At these words, Zhàozhōu fell awake. Their heart became serene, like the bright moon.
July 10, 2025
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary heart is.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May it be pursued or not?”
Nánquán said, “If you seek it, you’ll never find it.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I don’t seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you sincerely live The Way of No Pretending, it’s just like the sky: wide open, vast, emptiness. How can you say yes or no to it?”
December 3, 2024
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary Heart is The Way.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May it be pursued or not?”
Nánquán said, “If you seek it, you will never find it.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I do not seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you truly realize The Way of no-pretending, it is just like the sky: wide open, vast, emptiness. How can you say yes or no to it?”
At these words, Zhàozhōu fell awake. Their heart became serene, like the bright moon.
January 2024
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary Heart is The Way.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May it be pursued or not?”
Nánquán said, “If you seek it, you will never find it.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I do not seek it, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is fake enlightenment. Not knowing is unremembering. If you truly realize The Way of no-pretending, it is just like the sky: wide open, vast, emptiness. How can you say yes or no to it?”
At these words, Zhàozhōu had sudden enlightenment. Their heart became serene, like the bright moon.
First Indy Community Yoga Version (used through 2023), adapted from The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, translated by Green (Shambala 1998)
One day, Zhàozhōu asked Nánquán: “What is The Way?”
Nánquán said, “Ordinary Heart is The Way.”
Zhàozhōu said, “May I seek it or not?”
Nánquán said, “To seek is to deviate.”
Zhàozhōu said, “Well, if I do not seek, how can I know about The Way?”
Nánquán said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. To know is to have a concept. To not know is to be ignorant. When you truly realize The Way beyond doubt, it is just like the sky: wide open, vast, emptiness. How can you say yes or no to it?”
At these words, Zhàozhōu had sudden enlightenment. His heart became like the bright (clear) moon.
Text from The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, translated by Green (Shambala 1998)
The master asked Nan-ch’uan (Nansen), “What is the Way?”
Nan-ch’uan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.”
The master said, “Then may I direct myself towards it or not?”
Nan-ch’uan said, “To seek [it] is to deviate [from it].”
The master said, “If I do not seek, how can I know about the Way?”
Nan-chu’an said, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing. To know is to have a concept; to not know is to be ignorant. If you truly realize the Way of no doubt, it is just like the sky: wide open vast emptiness. How can you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to it?”
At these words the master had sudden enlightenment. His mind became like the clear moon.
