Our Separated Soul

Goso said to his monks, “Seijo’s soul separated from her being. Which was the real Seijo?” 
—Mumonkan Case 35, “Seijo and Her Soul Are Separated”

This koan comes from a famous Chinese folktale of the Tang period. Once upon a time, Chokan loved his beautiful daughter Sei very much. (Sei is a proper name and jo means girl.) When Sei was little, Chokan teased her, saying she and her handsome cousin Ochu would make a fine married couple. The two cousins grew up, fell in love, and were devastated when Chokan announced Sei’s engagement to another man. Heartbroken, they ran away and eventually had two kids. But they both longed to return home and get her father’s blessing.  

Leaving Sei in the boat, Ochu went to see Chokan and apologized for running away with Sei. Chokan was dumbfounded. “My daughter Sei has been in a coma since the day you left.” Chokan showed him the sickly Sei in bed. Ochu said, “This can’t be, Sei is in my boat right now.” Chokan’s servant confirmed Sei was on the boat. Chokan told this to the sick Sei, who silently got out of bed just as the other Sei arrived at the house, and the two Seijos became one. Sei then said, “I didn’t know I was in a coma. When I heard Ochu ran away, I followed his boat as if in a dream. I’m not sure which was the real me: the one sick in bed, or the wife and mother.”

Now, Master Goso is not asking us to solve this folktale mystery but to open up our penetrating Zen eye and see our true nature clearly, as Master Mumon comments: 

When you realize what the real is, you will see that we pass from one husk to another like travelers stopping for a night’s lodging. But if you do not realize it yet, I earnestly advise you not to rush about wildly. When earth, water, fire, and air suddenly separate, you will be like a crab struggling in boiling water with its seven or eight arms and legs. When that happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This tale reveals how we humans play many roles in life and relate differently to various people and situations. Who is the Real Self underlying and taking on these roles? These roles are more like guests and hosts of the Real Self. Even our personalities are more servants than masters of the Mind.

Someone told me recently he didn’t know who he was, who I was, who anyone was. How wonderful! There’s so much to endlessly discover. How audacious to think we completely know anything!

But we suffer when we, like Seijo, are separated from ourselves. This koan brings up many questions: Are we one with what we are doing? Are we always wishing we were someplace else? Are we torn between the different aspects of our lives or roles we are asked to take on? What is keeping us from full commitment to our Buddhist path?

A separate soul can be found in us as a society. As Abraham Lincoln famously said:  

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. . .  ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” 

As Buddhists, we wish all beings to be free—free from the greed, anger, and ignorance that causes suffering. We vow to awaken to our True Nature of interdependence and the co-arising of all things. 

We wish to think of our country as united but see continual evidence that we are still very divided. The so-called United States was founded on the genocide of numerous Indigenous peoples, and the forced labor of enslaved Africans. The great inventor Buckminster Fuller said: “We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”

To delve deeper into this “house divided” from a Buddhist perspective, we might ask: What’s the difference between diversity and division? Can we have one without the other? We aspire to “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” But our nation’s soul is separated. One aspect is full of greed, hatred, and delusion; the other believes in liberty and justice for everyone. Both aspects are in each of us. It’s a delusion to think that these qualities apply only to certain people. Could this be another folktale?

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful new nation. It was told in its early years that it was betrothed to liberty and justice for all. But then its Founding Fathers wanted to marry it off to greed, anger, and ignorance—consumerism, genocide, oppression. One side pulled away from that and vowed to be awake to its underside in the pursuit of liberty and justice. But the other side stayed sick in a coma of delusive harmful behavior. Who is the real United States?

These two karmic tributaries flow through each of us—whether we recognize it or not. Witnessing the repercussions of our sense of separation is painful. We may “pass from one husk to another” thinking we are free from blame, but there is only the One True Body.

Will this nation—or any, for that matter—unite into the One Body, even with all its differences? The House Un-Divided that it already is—and cannot be otherwise. Can a nation realize its True Self? Are we not a part of that process? Doesn’t it take each of us to realize our Essential Nature?

Buckminster Fuller also said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give them a tool to use which will lead them to think differently.”

In our various Buddhist communities, we have subtle, myriad differences. But we also have a common renewed intention to be beneficial, fortified by the practices of zazen, council, atonement, metta working together with the three tenets of not knowing, bearing witness, and healing action. These practices are exactly what is needed in our divided house—both individually and collectively.

The aspirational United States is often referred to as a great democratic experiment, and we truly are a work in progress. The global task of peacemaking, reconciliation, mutual recognition, and justice is an unending process that takes boundless patience, deep listening, and dropping preconceptions. But isn’t that what we commit to with our great bodhisattva vows? 

What is inside our own house of the mind that is divided? We can find ourselves in situations where we construct narratives about ourselves. Often, others seem to construct an image of us that is different from how we see ourselves. This is true of nations and individuals. If we overidentify with one aspect, we can lose the rest of our potential or be blind to areas that need to be dealt with. We can experience conflicts between our different roles and those of others too. We can forget the ripples are all part of the Great Ocean.

Mumon’s verse on this koan: 

The moon above the clouds is ever the same; 
Valleys and mountains are separate from each other. 
How wonderful! How blessed! 
Is this one or is this two?

Feeling separated from ourselves can reveal not just a yearning to fully express our gifts but also a deep longing to know our True Self. We may feel something in us is not whole—but sense there is a Whole. To close the gap and experience our Real Self, we must personally shed all concepts, expectations, and surface answers.

Master Huo-an wrote a verse on Seijo’s koan:

Whatever done is not forgotten.
Even in thousands of years:
When causes and conditions combine,
Results and consequences are naturally experienced.

We may be experiencing the consequences of the harmful deluded side of ourselves. Knowing that our individual awakening affects not just our own lives but also the greater House Un-Divided can inspire full-hearted commitment to practice.

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This article was adapted from a piece originally published on the Zen Center of Los Angeles’s blog.