The "Wagon Wheel" Koan

“I chortled at your insinuation that a luxury retirement home is perhaps not the most fulsome personal response to 'vast and empty, no merit.’

“But it did get me thinking about my own response. I think of sitting with my father as he took his walk through the Eastern gate and catching Matthew as he entered through the West. What's the meaning of those journeys? At the moment, I'm eating a Wagon Wheel as I sit up in the night - Matthew's insulin pump site failed, and I have to wait an hour to place a new one - long story.

“Whether there's no merit to this or great merit, what's the difference? It just needs to be done. I'd demonstrate it by getting up and walking out the door I came in through.”

Today, I received an inspiring response to a koan most of us have worked with again and again. I’ve known Ken MacDonald for more than 30 years now. We met at the Palolo Valley Zen Center during a 7-day sesshin with Bob Aitken, and because we were strictly observant back then, we didn’t introduce ourselves for a whole week, which included making breakfast for 18 or so other meditators—grunts, smiles, and pointing—lots of smiles. We liked one another.

Over the years, we sat together a lot; we visited one another. At his house on Virgil Street, I heard the ice on the Red River crack in the middle of the night when the temperature dropped well below 125 F, and the water rushing through Winnipeg froze instantly. I heard him with several members of the orchestra play music in a hospice for a young woman friend who was dying way too young. I’ve been delighted to hear his tales of making music for small horses and whales. I’ve met his spouse and children, other Zen and music friends, all people I wish I could spend more time with, but time seems the limited quantity, not admiration, wonder, and love.

To my friendly outside eye, Ken seems to live life effortlessly. I’m sure that there’s pain and struggle; we all share the turbulence of inevitable events; it's called living. But in general, as he writes, from sitting with his father as “he took his walk through the Eastern gate and catching [his son] Matthew as he entered through the West,” he wonders. You know—perhaps Big Questions, but he moves through it all seamlessly and with grace and love. Like a masterful orchestral performance, subtle, not missing a note that I can see, though I am sure his awareness is more finely tuned.

He talks in a breezy way that sometimes makes me wonder if he’s missing something. But as I listen, I wonder what it is that I’m missing in my life. What richness am I blind to? I wonder. And as the great sage says, it seems vast and empty with no meaning.

So, as an experiment, I tried to notice what small things I might have missed in his story. While waiting for his son’s insulin pump to begin working properly, he bit into a Wagon Wheel. I’ve spent time in Australia and Canada, and I now spend most of my time in another Commonwealth country. Before that I had no idea what a Wagon Wheel was. Now I know this extraordinary treat: two Marie biscuits wrapped around a marshmallow and covered in chocolate. In Australia, apparently to demonstrate their criminal past, they add a dab of jam to the marshmallow before squeezing it all together. Simple, straightforward, ordinary ingredients, and so tasty it brings out life’s own flavor. What a lovely way to trick our attention into experiencing parts of life that might otherwise disappear before they can even reveal themselves.