Hot Buddha, Cold Buddha

The monk then asked, "Where is a place that is neither hot nor cold?" To this, Tozan replied, "When it is cold, be completely cold; when it is hot, be completely hot." 

Avoiding Suffering
    
The monk was asking a very reasonable question, one that we ask in our lives all of the time. He wanted to know how he could escape suffering. He was asking how to bypass the endless difficulties which assail day in and day out.

I'm not talking about catastrophes here, like the recent earthquakes, floods, typhoons and droughts which are becoming increasingly commonplace, but more the "hots" and "colds" of our daily lives.

We all suffer from heat, literally, in the summer, and cold in the winter. We get tired, we get frustrated and upset, we pull our backs, get headaches and the flu. It's part and parcel of our living in these flesh-and-blood bodies.

On a broader level, "hot and cold" refers to any difficulty and discomfort we may encounter, in our bodies and lives in general. It's happening all the time. This fact of life is what the Buddha called the truth of suffering, and it was the First Noble Truth that he taught after his enlightenment. 

The inquiring monk, however, represented the normal approach to this truth of the seemingly indelible problems in life. He wanted to avoid them entirely, to escape their grasp. Makes sense: if you have a headache, take an aspirin. If you're cold, turn on the heater.

In fact, there's an old Zen proverb which points to this commonsense attitude: when hungry, eat; when tired sleep. Do what is necessary to remove the problem.

That works up to a point, but the problems keep happening. How can we avoid them completely? That's what the monk wanted, a foolproof solution. He was asking for the golden key to life's problems. So, Tozan's first reply was recommending this fantasy: go to a place where there are no problems. Try to find it if you can, and tell me about it when you come back.

How We Avoid Suffering In Our Lives
    
We've all tried this solution in different ways. It may have been rushing into a relationship to avoid our loneliness or pain of loss from a previous one; it may be a fabulous vacation spot to escape work's demands. It may be a cigarette or stiff drink to distract from the day's anxieties, or a couple of hours of mindless television to just blank out for a while.

All of these solutions have the same nature - they provide band-aids to cover up the festering sores, but they do nothing to remove the underlying pain. We don't see it for a while, so we believe it's gone. When the novelty of the fantasy or escape fades, the problem rears its head in our minds even larger than before.

This situation is far too familiar to us, and yet most of us continue to attempt this escape to a place without hot or cold in different ways. It's as if we all, to varying degrees, fall under Einstein's definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. 
    
Of course the monk has attempted this, and that is why he comes to Tozan with his question. He is prepared for the first answer, and so he wants to know exactly where this magical hot and cold-free place is.

Tozan does all he can to help the monk, telling him in other words to give up the attempts at a great escape. When you're hot, be hot. When you're cold, be cold. Open your mind to your experience of the present moment, and see what it holds before it is judged as good or bad.

No Escape

The Buddhist path is sometimes referred to as a path of no escape. In mindfulness meditation you observe what you are experiencing without judgment or comment. This practice is a model for an approach to our whole lives: look at what is happening without immediately boxing it into ready categories of good and bad.

Get to know your present moment, explore it fully, see it pass, and open your mind to the next moment. Only when we are fully in our moment, whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable, do we know how to relate to it. 

When Hungry, Eat. When Tired, Sleep.
    
This is the deeper understanding of "when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep." When you are hungry, be fully hungry, and then you'll know what to do about it: eat! But if we think hunger, or whatever difficulty which may arise, is something we should escape from, then we'll miss the true connection we can have to our reality.

Sometimes the response is to eat, sometimes to not - it depends on how fully we are aware of the nature of the hunger. That is done by experiencing it fully. There's a beautiful book by Jon Kabat-Zin, Wherever You Go, There You Are, whose title encapsulates this wisdom: our present moment, whatever it is, is the very place we have to do our spiritual work. It's now or never, here or nowhere.

Acceptance
    
But what does Tozan mean by being completely hot or cold? This is a question of acceptance. How are we able to accept what is happening in our lives without strong resistance or judgement? The energy we expend in terms of wanting and not wanting, of running to or away from things, can be redirected into exploring the nature of our present experience.

We discover in this burgeoning inner awareness the difference between pain and suffering: pain is natural, suffering is self-created. We feel pain in our changing conditions, we feel hot and cold and so forth, but it is an extra step coming from us to turn that pain into something to be avoided at all costs - that is suffering.
    
When discomfort is labelled 'bad,' then it is suffering. This doesn't mean we should want it or seek it out, but when it happens - and it will, we all know - then we can observe it without resistance. And if we feel resistance of fear, we look closely at that without judgement.

In this way we do escape a negative pattern, the fight-or-flight reaction we have to difficulties. When we simply look at the experience, let ourselves be hot or cold, then it removes the burden of having to get rid of it or escape it. The moment changes, and we explore whatever comes. This path of acceptance awakens us to possibilities of the present which are normally obscured by our desires to be free of difficulties. We find ourselves right here, and it's an interesting place to be.