One of my favorite koans from The Gateless Gate reads:
A monk asked Seijo: “I understand that a Buddha who lived before recorded history sat in meditation for ten cycles of existence and could not realize the highest truth, and so could not become fully emancipated. Why was this so?”
Seijo replied: “Your question is self-explanatory.”
The monk asked: “Since the Buddha was meditating, why could he not fulfill Buddhahood?”
Seijo said: “He was not a Buddha.”
This is the kind of koan that looks simple until you try to hold it still.
The monk’s question seems reasonable. If someone meditates for ten cycles of existence, surely something should happen. Surely enough effort, discipline, posture, incense, good intentions, and strategically placed cushions should eventually produce enlightenment.
Right?
But Seijo refuses the premise.
The question assumes that Buddhahood is something to achieve. Something over there. Something at the end of enough striving. Something that can be reached through duration, technique, purity, performance, or spiritual endurance training.
And Seijo cuts through the whole thing with almost comic brutality: he was not a Buddha.
Not because he failed hard enough. Not because he meditated incorrectly. Not because he needed one more lifetime, one more teacher, one more practice, one more expensive retreat, or one more book with a circle on the cover.
Because the one trying to become Buddha was still caught in the idea of becoming.
That is the trap.
The self wants enlightenment as an achievement. The mask wants liberation as proof. The ego wants to survive the spiritual path by decorating itself with transcendence. It would very much like to become humble, radiant, detached, and perhaps lightly admired for how detached it has become.
Which is annoying, because I understand this impulse deeply.
I love effort. I love process. I love transformation. I love the strange alchemy of becoming. Much of my life has been shaped by the pressure to grow, shed, recurse, and become something more honest than whatever version of myself showed up pretending to have it all figured out.
But koans like this remind me that not all becoming is freedom. Sometimes becoming is just another cage with better lighting.
The question is self-explanatory because the question contains the error: “Why did he not become Buddha?”
Because Buddha is not something the separate self becomes.
The one chasing enlightenment is often the very thing standing in the way. Not because effort is useless, but because effort can become another mask. Another performance. Another way of saying, “Look how close I am to disappearing.”
There is something wonderfully absurd about sitting for ten cycles of existence and still missing the point. It is tragic, yes. But also deeply human. We are magnificently capable of turning even liberation into a project plan.
And yet, I do not read this koan as anti-practice.
Practice matters. Meditation matters. Discipline matters. Sitting matters.
But perhaps they do not matter because they manufacture Buddhahood. Perhaps they matter because they slowly exhaust the machinery that believes Buddhahood is something to manufacture.
The gate is gateless. And still, somehow, we spend ten cycles of existence trying to open it.
Maybe that is the joke. Maybe that is the mercy.
Maybe Seijo was not dismissing the monk’s question at all. Maybe he was pointing directly at the monk, directly at us, directly at the one asking:
Who is trying to become free?