Chan Master Yunmen taught: You have the one thing that matters, each and every one of you! Its great function manifests without the slightest effort on your part. What is the one thing that matters? One thing. He doesn’t put a name to it, but tells us what it does, which is, it functions in a way that nothing else does. What is the one thing that is always functioning, without effort on your part? A question like this could trap you into endless intellectual speculation, which doesn’t help or satisfy, though you may need to do it for a while. When our habit of thinking runs down, what then? How can we realize the actual meaning of this life? If the one thing that really matters is always functioning, then we can look to any moment of our experience for what he’s pointing to here. We find the one thing that matters in this very moment. We just need to look.
