29 March, 2026

Leave No Ashes

In this short passage, Ken points to two aspects of practice. One is to experience completely, so that life is lived fully with few echoes or reverberations. The other is to do completely, to give full attention and leave nothing half-done or trailing behind.

I feel these as distinct yet inseparable. To experience completely asks for openness to whatever is here, pleasant, neutral, or painful. To do completely asks for wholehearted responses to life experiences. A key here is balance: openness can become inward, passive, or ungrounded, while wholehearted response can become driven, performative, or self-important.

This passage reminds me of the famous line in the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It also brings to mind the two wings of Mahayana practice, emptiness and compassion. Taken together, they point to a balanced practice: emptiness or wisdom prevents compassion from collapsing into sentimentality, attachment, or the need to fix everything, and compassion prevents wisdom from hardening into abstraction, coldness, or nihilism.

From What to Do About Christmas

Ken: When something is experienced completely, good or bad, it’s done, that’s it.

All of this is connected with impermanence because we know the passage of time by recalling what we’ve done and that engenders all of these feelings. But as we’ve seen, if you experience things completely in the moment, they tend to leave fewer traces and fewer reverberations or resonances around. So that’s one of the things to take out of this.

In the Zen tradition, Suzuki Roshi says, “Whatever you do, do so completely that there aren’t even any ashes left.” Which is an extraordinary intense way of living, and you see this reflected in the attitude of a lot of athletes. Basketball players don’t leave anything on the court, which is: do it totally.

So I just want you to think for a few moments about what it would be like if everything you do, you do with your total attention? Complete, there’s nothing left. What would life be like that way?