Tiny Revolutions №121: It's all just the universe 🪐
What kind of monster would you be?
Taking a cue from Katherine Dee, whose newsletter default.blog I admire, I’m going to start re-introducing myself in every post. I’m Sara Campbell, a writer, lay Zen teacher, and guide who helps people navigate change, endings, and reinvention, among other things. This newsletter explores the art of becoming unkillable—not invincible, but resilient. Informed by my practice of Zen Buddhism, it’s about poking holes in the stories that hold you back and discovering that what the world needs is exactly who you already are.
Following up on my last post about taking the Bodhisattva Vows, I'm sharing the dharma talk I gave at Angel City Zen Center’s most recent retreat. In it, I explore this question through the lens of Dasui's Kalpa Fire, a wonderfully dark and slapstick koan about cosmic destruction, three dead teachers, and what happens when we refuse to accept that everything burns in the end.
Through the lens of this ancient story, I share some of my own spiritual autobiography, which was essentially a humbling journey from thinking I could figure out how to do life “correctly” to discovering the relief of being just one speck in the vast fabric of reality. (Isn’t that usually how it goes???)
Note: I think this talk hits much better when you hear it in my actual voice! You can listen to the audio version here on the ACZC podcast.
Dasui's Kalpa Fire
The Koan
A monk asked Dasui, “When the great kalpa fire comes and the universe is burned up into nothing, will all of this be destroyed?”
Dasui said, “It will be destroyed.”
The monk asked, “And we go along with it?”
Dasui said, “We go along with it.”
The monk couldn't accept this, so he went and asked Longji, “When the great kalpa fire comes and the universe is burned up into nothing, will all of this be destroyed?”
Longji said, “It will not be destroyed.”
The monk asked, “How will it not be destroyed?”
Longji said, “It's all just the universe.”
The monk still couldn't accept this, so he went to see Touzi and asked the same question. Touzi went to the altar, lit some incense, and said, “The great Buddha appears!” Then he turned back to the monk and said, “You should go back and apologize to your teachers.”
So the monk went back to see Dasui, but by the time he arrived, Dasui had died. He went back to see Longji, but by the time he arrived, Longji had died. So he went back to see Touzi, but by the time he arrived, Touzi had died too.
The Talk
Hello everyone. We are waist-deep in this retreat, which is about the time I start to wonder what kind of deranged animal signed up for this thing and why they continue to do it. I love Zen retreats—I've done many by now and always look forward to them—but I always remember while I'm in them: oh wait, this is really hard.
This koan has been the focus of my training period, and I want to break down what I think this story is saying to us and how it's shown up for me.
The Know-It-All Monster
When Gyokei (ACZC’s Supporting Teacher) was talking earlier about entering the monastery at 19 and thinking he knew everything, it reminded me: do you ever think about what a monster you would be if you had gotten everything you wanted?
I think about that a lot. There’s a big know-it-all part of me. I remember one teacher in high school who didn’t like me, and I couldn't figure out why until I realized: oh, it's because I'm one of those little know-it-all people. I was a big reader, kind of nerdy, and had lived a lot of life even early on. I thought I knew what I was doing, plus I'd read like four million books.
I had this arrogance, this cockiness balanced with profound insecurity (which I think is still true of me). I had this idea that I could figure out how to do life correctly. And it worked a lot of the time. I sailed through school, was a hard worker, could figure things out. I propelled myself to do cool stuff in the world.
Then I hit my thirties and was gradually more and more horrified to discover that the typical milestones (husband, kids, house, etc.) weren't arriving. You know that cliché where people say “it happens when you're not looking for it”? Well, it just never happened for me. It was very disorienting and humbling.
For a lot of my friends and family, things worked out in mostly traditional ways. In my entire family of nine kids, I'm the only one who didn't get married or have children. I convinced myself that everything was my fault—that I just hadn't done things correctly, hadn't looked for the right kind of men, hadn't forced myself to work the right kind of job. I had very strong narratives about how things should be and how my life wasn't measuring up.
I was drawn to Buddhism and meditation, but I still couldn't let go of how I thought things should be from my family-of-origin story. It was profound self-absorption—really me being like, “Bad things shouldn't happen to me. Bad things should only happen to other people. I am a good person. I have done all the things correctly.”
That's what I mean when I ask, what kind of monster would I be if everything had worked out?
By my late thirties, I had tried so many different things. My refrain at that time was: “No matter what I do, things do not work out the way I want them to. Why do I even bother?” I was incredibly on edge as a human being. My self-trust was very low because I was holding myself to standards that weren't really what I was pursuing in life—this bizarre mismatch.
I had this sense that I was always one move away from completely imploding, really going into collapse mode. I once called my mom in my early thirties, miserable in my corporate PR job, making six figures, and said I was thinking about going back to school, and her response was: “You need to be careful. People are living in tent cities in Sacramento.”
That's the kind of black-and-white thinking that was happening in my life and world.
Breaking Down the Koan
So anyway, this kalpa fire koan—I love it. On one level, I'm like, “Hell yeah, we're all gonna die! Let this thing burn, fuck it.” It's so surprising. You don't expect to read something like this in a spiritual text. On a literary level, it's such an up-ender of expectations, with a slapstick feel I really appreciate.
First Section: Dasui's Response
“A monk asked Dasui, 'When the great kalpa fire comes and the universe is burned up into nothing, will all of this be destroyed?' Dasui said, ‘It will be destroyed.’ The monk asked, ‘And we go along with it?’ Dasui said, ‘We go along with it.’”
This is a very dark passage. The reality is we cannot avoid pain. Things are impermanent. This reminds me of the Flaming Lips song: “Do you realize that everyone you know will die?”
It's devastating. Someday all of this is going to be destroyed, and so will we. Nobody pulls any punches in Buddhism. I like that about it.
Second Section: Longji's Response
“The monk couldn't accept this, so he went and asked Longji... Longji said, ‘It will not be destroyed... It's all just the universe.’”
Now we're moving into the portion of “that's just the universe, that's how it is.” The nature of life is change and impermanence, one of the three seals of Buddhism along with suffering and no-self. You can't get around this. Everything is always in a dynamic process; there's no solidity.
This can be scary, but I also find it such a huge relief. We mostly either want to be in a pleasant state or assume we're going to be in one. When you're operating from this assumption that everything should be good, it's terrifying to think everything’s going to change and we’re going to die.
But one of the delightful things about these teachings is that if you're operating under the assumption that everything’s good or should be good, you’re willfully overlooking the fact that things suck a lot of the time. You're too hot in the zendo during afternoon zazen. The shell of the hard boiled egg you had for breakfast wouldn’t come off. You slept poorly. Your back hurts.
When you tune into that, impermanence is actually kind of great. You might get another hard-boiled egg and it’ll be easy to peel. You’ll rest and your back will feel better. You’ll get out of the zendo and have a nice cool drink of water. It's interesting that we’re always glossing over fully half of our experience because we think it should be the opposite.
When you think about it that way, you can really welcome impermanence. You woke up in a good mood today after a rough week. You've been unemployed for months or years, and you finally got a job. Impermanence can be a relief.
In this section, Longji is saying it’s all just the universe. We can welcome that. We can work with that, and that could be okay too, no matter what we think about it. These two sections look like Longji and Dasui are saying different things, but they're both true. We are going to die, AND everything's totally fine.
Third Section: Touzi's Response
“The monk still couldn’t accept this, so he went to Touzi... Touzi went to the altar, lit some incense, and said, ‘The great Buddha appears!’ Then turned back to the monk and said, ‘You should go back and apologize to your teachers.’”
Touzi is pointing out that it doesn't really matter. We're living right now. Let's light some incense. That's what we have. This is the same move from Dave's creation story yesterday about the Buddha, where the Buddha says, “I don't know any answers. I'm just here to end suffering.” It doesn't really matter why it came about.
This is another huge relief to me. It's beyond my ability to fully understand. I did some narrativizing in this talk, but I can go back and think all the things I want about how my thirties did or didn't turn out—those are just stories. Maybe some are true, maybe some aren’t. A lot of it is beyond me.
When I keep myself at the center of that story—the things I did or failed to do—I’m overlooking something massive: all the causes and conditions and everything else that contributed to that. It’s pointing to the universe being so much bigger than anything we can really understand. No matter what we think about it, things are just the way they are. The mistake we make is thinking they should be any other way.
I come back to that all the time. My version of the spiritual crisis is: I could not accept that. I could not let go. I could not take myself off the hook or just be like, “Okay, the life you’re having, even though it doesn't look how you thought it would look, is still fine.”
That's really what brought me here—lacking some fundamental level of perspective. That's very American, very Western. Main character syndrome, I think people call it now. I'm still working with that.
Also, because I was such a book reader, you can read all the books and think you know what's happening, but you just need reminders all the time. That’s essentially why I started coming to ACZC every week—I’d tried every other way but this way, and I was afraid it didn't work, so I had to go to ACZC every week and sit zazen.
It's an acceptance that I just need to be reminded of all these things and need to be among other people who probably also appreciate the reminders. I've heard Dave say that if he doesn't do zazen for a couple of days, he starts to regress. That's been true for me—putting things in perspective.
I found lots of ways to do that: therapy, walks in the woods, talking to people. All those things are true, but there's something about Zen practice that is different.
Final Section: The Teachers Die
“So the monk went back to see Dasui, but by the time he arrived, Dasui had died. He went back to see Longji, but by the time he arrived, Longji had died. So he went back to see Touzi, but by the time he arrived, Touzi had died too.”
This is the kicker. Doesn't that just track? You go to the mountaintop, you seek out the wisdom, you go out of your way to try and get it all right and find people who can give you the answers, and then they die. You miss them initially, so you want to go back, but they're dead.
This section is saying: life is just right now. There is no going back. I can’t go back and be the person I was who made the choices that led to me not having the things I wanted, or who was caught up in the flow of life in a way that steered me in a different path.
The irony is not lost on me that if I had gotten those things, I would not be here training to be a lay teacher, and I'm absolutely so happy to be here and grateful. Both things are true. All of it’s true.
The Hardest Pill to Swallow
The hardest pill for me to swallow has been the idea that there is no one coming to save you. It’s not that there aren’t life rafts—there are life rafts in terms of practice, community like ACZC, friendships, relationships. You get a great job that you love and it lasts for a long time. But ultimately, you are the one who has to row the boat.
The good news is that we are here to help each other. That's why we do this kind of thing.
What Zen practice has given me is tremendous faith that everything can be okay, even when it’s really bad. And this sense of liberation that it’s not all on me—this pressure that if I just do things correctly, it can all go great. I just don't think that’s how life works.
I feel so much more at home in this world these days. I’m far more aware that nothing exists in a vacuum—everything only exists in relationship to each other.
I don't really have that jagged sense of “shit is about to fall apart” that I used to have—that total lack of self-trust. Not that I don't have my moments, because I certainly do. You need people you can call and be like, “Please remind me that my life is not terrible and we're all about to die.” But it’s more relaxed.
It's like there's a fabric—I'm in a dense fabric of reality. It’s us, it’s the causes and conditions, it’s the culture, it’s the climate, it’s the food. It’s so many things. Having that perspective and the reminder and awareness that all of this is part of the deal, and I'm just one speck in the universe, is a huge relief.
A Different Kind of Ambition
I was pretty ambitious in seeking external goals when I was young—I wanted to hit the milestones, all that. I still feel ambitious in a way, but it's a totally different kind of ambition. The ambition now is: be responsive to life as it is, create things, do interesting projects with people, be there for each other, don't miss the opportunity to field the opportunities that are presented to me right here.
Don't be so focused on looking out for what I think I want that I miss all of these things. I think that was true for me before I found this practice. That’s said, there's a way you tell a story like “before and after,” but I had a pretty great life before all this happened. I had wonderful friends and family, but I couldn't see them and couldn’t appreciate them because I was too focused on the things I didn't have.
I’ve just come into more of a balance—accepting that a lot of conflicting things are true and letting that being okay, and not pushing the ones I didn’t like away. When I think about my earlier self, there was a lot of willfully refusing to accept life as it is.
My Zen practice has taken me to: Can I look at it even if it sucks? And that's a little easier. It's not fun, but it's a lot easier.
A Note!
I decided to become a Zen teacher because after many years of seeking, it was the thing I did that most freed me from all the most insidious effects of our culture of toxic individualism, while at the same time making me more myself than I have ever been. It is imperfect as all systems are, but to this day I have not found a better one for learning to bushwhack your way to a life that’s truly yours. Turns out humans working together over thousands of years have managed to figure some things out and pass them along. I’m excited to be part of this grand tradition and help share it in the way only I can.
But I’m still doing other things, and I’ll be back soon to talk to you about them.
Thanks for reading, as ever.
😘
Sara
p.s. If this resonated, tap the heart or share it with someone who needs it.
p.p.s. If you’re curious about Zen, I’m giving an Intro to Zen talk on Monday, June 23rd at 7:30 pm PT at Angel City Zen Center in LA, though you can also join via Zoom. All are welcome! We’ll start with 30 minutes of meditation (instruction provided) and then get into it. No need to register; just show up or reply to this email and I’ll share the Zoom link to join.
p.p.p.s. If you liked the koan above, I really enjoyed this essay about it by Dale Wright, who offers a much more literary analysis.
Love this! The lecture/sermon form suits you.
I loved this talk, Sara. I needed to hear everything you said. Thank you.