Tozan's "No Cold and Heat"

A monk asked Tozan,

"When cold and heat come, how should one avoid them?"

Tozan said,
"Why not go to a place where there is neither cold nor heat?"
The monk said,
"What kind of place is it where there is neither cold nor heat?"
Tozan said,
"When it is cold, the cold kills you; when it is hot, the heat kills you."

-Case 43 from The Blue Cliff Record

Spring is a time of temperature extremes in the Southwest. We literally can go from 60F/15C to 95F/35C in a weekend and when you include the whole elevation factor it gets even more extreme. You can go from sweltering heat to freezing cold in an hour or two.

When I went to Zen Mountain Center in mid-April the forecast for the weekend was sunny and 70F/21C. Before I drove up that Friday afternoon I had lunch with my friend Andy in the valley. It was 85F/27C. We were in shorts and sandals. Then, my Hyundai Santa Fe climbed up the mountain. It was a bit cooler but nothing too extreme. I sat with the group that evening and headed off for bed around 9:00.

When I got up Saturday morning at 4:00am I heard what sounded like wind and rain outside. In a sleepy daze I washed my face and got dressed for early morning sitting. I grabbed my umbrella, opened the door of my cabin to go to the zendo, and stepped into wet, heavy snow.


I was wide-awake. It was about 26F/-3C and I, a little desert rat, was walking though the snow in sandals. Needless to say, it was a bone-chilling day of sitting. All I could think of as I froze was sitting with Andy the afternoon before eating in the hot afternoon sun.


My friends all offered warmer clothes and better shoes but after walking a sitting during the arctic part of the day without them, I decided to just be cold.


By the following afternoon it was sunny and 70F/21C again and within a few hours I was driving through the desert on I-10 sweating in 100F/38C. After freezing my feet off the day before I decided not to turn on the air conditioner but to bake in the sun and just be hot.

I turned the vent on but it was so hot outside that the air blowing on my feet felt like a hairdryer. I could still remember the ice cold sensations in my toes from the day before but now, in the heat of the desert, the idea of running around in my sandals through the snow felt good just as it had only been in the snow that the burn of the desert sun on my feet felt good.

“When cold be cold. When hot be hot. When in pain be in pain . . .” Etc. Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

“Just watch your breath and count to ten. Then start again at one,” I was told by a teacher back in 1988. “If you lose track or get distracted just start at one again. The key is not to get to ten but to forgive yourself for not getting to ten.”

Someone recently asked me what to do in his head when he’s meditating. I told him about counting to ten. Then he asked me what it was like to get to ten without a thought. I told him when it happens to me I’ll let him know.