August 22, 2026

This Season Is Enough

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

Wumen Huikai was a thirteenth-century Chan master who spent six years wrestling with a single koan before compiling The Gateless Gate, a manual of forty-eight cases meant to shock students out of conceptual thinking. This verse follows the case 'Ordinary Mind Is the Tao,' in which Nanquan tells Zhaozhou that the path is simply everyday mind, nothing added, nothing sought elsewhere. Wumen's poem answers by naming spring's flowers, autumn's moon, summer's breeze, winter's snow — each season whole on its own, needing no comparison to another. Zen calls the practice of Present-Moment Awareness 'ordinary mind': eating when eating, walking when walking, letting the task in front of you be the entire world for as long as you're doing it. Nothing is missing from this moment except the mind's habit of looking past it.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Present-Moment Awareness →