Awakening in the Butcher Shop | Koshin Paley Ellison

Episode von Zencare Podcast von New York Zen Center · 29. Juli 2026 · 29 min

“We have to be endlessly humbled and endlessly receptive. And what a joy! That, to me, is the joy of practice: to be endlessly receptive to being changed by whatever kind of ‘meat’ you're getting.”

On the 26th day of NYZC’s summer practice period, Koshin sensei turns to a classic story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

When Banzan walked through a market, he overheard a customer demand the best piece of meat. The butcher replied, “Everything in my shop is the best. You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.”

The story ends simply: “At these words Banzan became enlightened.”

What would it mean to realize that whatever life is presenting to us right now—in the butcher shop, on the street, or the middle of a difficult relationship—is the best piece? Even what we don’t like. Even what makes us reactive. Even what we’ve been struggling with for fifty years. Can this moment, too, be whole and complete, nothing lacking?

Koshin reflects candidly on his own recent experience of rage and impatience in a long-standing relationship. He knows the teaching intellectually, and yet finds himself completely reactive anyway because understanding the dharma in our heads is not the same as living it in our bodies.

Practice, he reminds us, is not about eliminating pain or pretending everything feels good. It is about meeting what is here without adding another layer of resistance, judgment, or story. We inquire. We soften. We ask: What is this moment here to teach me?

And perhaps, again and again, we discover the strange joy of becoming endlessly receptive to being changed.

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