Trans experience and Zen practice meet in a simple, radical teaching: ordinary mind is the Way. For me, that means being openly and unapologetically trans is part of the Way itself.
Most of us who practice Zen know Jōshū from the famous breakthrough koan, “Jōshū’s Dog,” a classic that many of us have wrestled with. Jōshū is an incredible teacher in his own right, and he studied under his teacher, Nansen, for forty years.
Nansen is also well known in Zen lore, not just for his sharp teachings, but for the legendary moment when he killed a cat to make a point about attachment and division. While his actions seem harsh at times, they often carried an undercurrent of compassion and a deep desire to free his students from delusion.
The koan I want to explore is Case 19 from the Mumonkan: “Ordinary Mind Is the Way.”
Jōshū earnestly asked Nansen, “What is the Way?” Nansen answered, “The ordinary mind is the Way.” Jōshū asked, “Should I direct myself toward it or not?” Nansen said, “If you try to turn toward it, you go against it.” Jōshū asked, “If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the Way?” Nansen answered, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not-knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is a blank consciousness. When you have really reached the true Way beyond all doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as the great empty firmament. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong?” At these words, Jōshū was suddenly enlightened.
Zen and Trans Identity: Ordinary Mind in Practice
There’s a lot to say about this koan. But I want to start by saying this: for me, being openly, unapologetically trans is the Way.
I used to think I knew what the Way was. I was raised in a conservative Catholic household, and the path seemed very clear. If you’re assigned female at birth, like I was, then you are a woman. Full stop. Women marry men. Women have children. They buy houses and cars, work hard and raise our kids. That was the Way I was given. So I followed it.
I got married to my college sweetheart at 23. By 24, we had our first child. A couple years later, we had our second daughter. I got the job, the husband, the kids, the house, the cars, and I was miserable. I was miserable because I wasn’t living the truth of who I was. For a long time, I didn’t even know who I was. I was so deeply conditioned, so deluded by what I thought I knew, that I couldn’t even see the possibility that I might be gay or trans, or both really.
Nansen says, “If you try to turn toward it, you go against it.”
I tried to follow what I thought was the Way. But the harder I leaned into it, the further I drifted from myself. I didn’t know another way to live, and the world around me didn’t offer one.
Over time, the only thing that became truly clear was that I couldn’t go on like that. I reached a breaking point. When my daughters were three and one, I left my marriage. I felt like I had let all three of them down. It’s hard to let people down, isn’t it? It’s even harder when they’re the people you love the most in this world.
It was the most difficult time of my life. It took a toll on all four of us. There was a lot of pain. And still, there was no other way forward.
For years, I clung to ideas about what was right, what was good, what was responsible. About gender, about sexual orientation, about family, about religion, about what makes a life meaningful. But that kind of knowing, rigid, inherited, unquestioned, was its own kind of suffering.
As Nansen says in this koan, “Knowing is delusion; not knowing is a blank consciousness.” The Way isn’t about certainty. It’s about releasing our grip on fixed ideas and taking the next step anyway.
In the end, my choice wasn’t about knowing, but it was about listening to ordinary mind. It was about releasing the need to know, and taking a single, trembling step forward.
When I first read this koan, I was struck by Jōshū’s question, “If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the Way?” Like Jōshū, I’m someone who wants to try. I want to figure it out. I want to know I’m on the right path, especially right now in our country when the stakes are so high, when people’s lives are on the line.
One of the very first acts of those in power was to sign an executive order declaring there are only two “unchangeable sexes,” reaffirming a fixed and binary view of gender. For those of us who live beyond or between those categories, this is more than just policy. It is a denial of existence. It’s violence dressed up as order.
We often want someone to just give us the answer, to tell us what to do. But in this koan, the teacher doesn’t answer with certainty. Nansen doesn’t say, “Here’s the right action. Here’s the policy to support. Here’s how to be a good ally. Here’s how to make it better.” He says, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not-knowing.”
So how do we act when we don’t know or when we think we do know? When we think we’re right and others are wrong. How do we meet a moment that feels broken, cruel, overwhelming, when we don’t know the way out?
This sounds like a koan to me, but not one from any curriculum. One of many that life gives us in ample supply.
Zen doesn’t offer answers, but it does offer a path. We call it upaya: skillful means, or more simply, skillful action, which is a part of upaya.
Skillful action doesn’t mean always knowing the perfect thing to do. It means meeting each moment with clarity, compassion, and wisdom. It means responding to suffering not with reactivity, but with care. It means asking: What alleviates harm? What brings liberation? What supports awakening, not just for me, but for all beings?
Upaya is the heart of our Bodhisattva vows. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s responsive, dynamic, alive, and different for each of us. In the face of injustice, upaya is how we act without hardening our hearts. In the face of fear, it’s how we keep showing up, anyway. You might say that upaya is ordinary mind in motion.
So, how do we practice this? How can we respond skillfully to this moment, and so many others like it in our country? How do we respond as trans people, as allies, as human beings?
As I’ve been reflecting on how we meet this moment with skillful action, I kept coming back to something central to Zen practice: two touchstones, actually.
The Heart Sutra, which tells us that Avalokiteshvara, our Bodhisattva of Compassion, saw clearly the emptiness of all the five conditions, and became free of fear.
And our Four Great Vows, which are impossibly big and intimate. We vow to save all sentient beings, end all desires, master the dharmas, and attain the buddha way.
From these two texts, a kind of map began to emerge: three qualities that feel essential to practicing skillful action in this moment. I call them the Three Cs.
Clarity, Compassion, and Courage.
Clarity, because we vow to master the boundless dharmas. We vow to see clearly, to study the causes of suffering, to wake up to what’s really happening, not what we wish were happening.
Compassion, because we vow to save all beings. And because Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion, teaches us that true compassion begins with seeing deeply.
Courage, because we vow to attain the Way even though it is said to be unattainable. Because to live without fear, as the Heart Sutra says, requires great heart, literally great courage.
These Three Cs are not separate. They arise together, just as form and emptiness do. They help us respond not from reactivity, but from vow. From practice. From love.
Clarity and Discernment
First, we look clearly. We don’t turn away. We name what’s happening, not from a place of hate or judgment, but from a deep vow to wake up.
We see that this attack isn’t just on trans people. It’s an attack on the sacred truth of impermanence, of non-self. Buddhism teaches that all forms are empty of fixed identity. How can a government say anything is “unchangeable”? That’s delusion. That’s suffering.
And I say this as someone who once tried so hard to “know the Way” that I nearly lost myself. That kind of knowing is delusion. Seeing clearly is not the same as knowing in the dualistic sense. It’s meeting things directly, just as they are, before right or wrong. That’s clarity.
As a trans person, I know in my bones that identity is fluid, emergent, not fixed. That doesn’t make me confused. It means I’ve been forced to reckon with impermanence in a visceral way. My life is my teacher, one of my teachers.
I think of my intersex friend. His body defies the binary. Nature itself defies the binary. It’s biology. It’s reality.
And I think of my own body: assigned female at birth, pregnant twice, top surgery later. Long hair, short hair. Sometimes dresses, sometimes suits.
Each form, each moment, true and real. None of it fixed. None of it the whole story.
In Zen, we say that mind and body are not two, not one. My mind and body have sometimes felt at odds, but they are inseparable parts of who I am.
Living this way has forced me to let go of certainty. To stay close to the rawness of experience. To ask, again and again: what’s true in this moment?
This is where we turn to the Dharma.
We use it to discern: What’s illusion, and what’s truth? What’s ego, and what’s liberation? We cultivate the wisdom to say: These policies are rooted in delusion. This suffering is not inevitable.
We can act. We must act.
This is how we begin to master the boundless dharmas, not all at once, but one moment of clarity at a time.
Compassion and Connection
The second foundation of skillful action is compassion. In our practice, compassion is not sentimental. It’s relational. It’s the deep recognition that there is no separation between us. It’s being willing to open the heart to suffering, not just our own, but others’, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.
I want to tell you a story.
A couple of years ago, I attended a major professional conference at the Washington Convention Center. I had just registered and was walking the venue in my suit and tie, what I often call my armor. I’d had top surgery well before this, the suit fit perfectly, and I felt deeply at home in myself.
And then I had to pee.
For most people, choosing a restroom is a non-event. But for me, a non-binary person, it’s a constant reminder that the world still insists I choose between two doors that don’t tell the whole story of who I am. “What is the Way?” I wondered. I wasn’t yet comfortable using the men’s room, so I approached the women’s room like I always had.
But I wasn’t dressed like I always had been.
As I walked toward a stall, a woman screamed. She shouted that I was in the wrong bathroom and said she was calling security. At that moment, my armor felt paper-thin. She wasn’t trying to be cruel. She was afraid. Afraid of what didn’t fit into her categories. I wasn’t exactly afraid of her, but I was devastated that my mere existence could make someone else feel unsafe.
I could’ve yelled back. I could’ve shut down. I could’ve let her fear become my shame. I really wanted to do those things.
Instead, I asked myself again: What is the Way?
It was the same question I’d been sitting with moments before, but now it wasn’t about gender, or presentation, or where I belonged. It came from a deeper place. The essential point of view. Ordinary mind.
And I remembered: she is me. I am her.
We are not one, not two.
She was caught in delusion, yes, but I’ve been caught too. Not in the same way, and not with the same impact, but I’ve felt the pull of fear. I’ve known what it is to want things to be simpler than they are, to wish I could fit more neatly into the expectations around me. That doesn’t mean her behavior wasn’t harmful. It was. But compassion allowed me to see her humanity without abandoning my own.
And this, I believe, is a place where our practice calls for real honesty. If we’re truly committed to the Way, we’re asked to see ourselves in others, not just those we love or agree with, but even those we struggle with. Even those whose fear turns into cruelty. Even those who make policies that harm us or the people we care about.
Seeing them doesn’t mean agreeing with them. It doesn’t mean accepting injustice. It means recognizing that they, too, are caught in the conditions of suffering. They, too, are subject to delusion. They, too, inherently have ordinary mind.
That’s the radical demand of the Way. It’s not passive. It’s not permissive. It’s powerful. It insists: We are not one. Not two. And if we are sincere in our vows, we have to practice as if that’s true.
This is how we take up the vow to save all beings. Even the ones who don’t see us clearly. Even the ones who don’t yet see themselves clearly.
Courage and Accountability
And finally: skillful action means courage. It means taking a stand, not from ego or anger, but from our Bodhisattva vows.
As a practitioner, I don’t take this lightly. It means I carry our traditions with me and ask myself daily: What does it mean to embody the Dharma right now? Not 100 years ago. Not just in theory. Right now. In this America. In this body. In this community.
Right now, trans children across this country are being stripped of access to healthcare. A recent Supreme Court ruling upheld Tennessee’s restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for minors. This is not just abstract policy. It is suffering made law. It means young people who are simply trying to live authentically can now be denied gender-affirming care supported by clinical guidelines. Some will be forced to hide or suppress themselves. Some will be forced to detransition. Some will be pushed into despair. Some will die.
And I want to say this plainly: Gender-affirming healthcare saved my life. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I don’t mean that it was helpful or nice or affirming in some notional way. I mean I would not be here today if I hadn’t had access to it. It breathed life back into me. It gave me a sense of belonging to my own body. It allowed me to want to keep living.
And I say that as someone who is white. Who is financially secure. Who lives in Maryland, a state that, so far, has protected trans rights. If it was this hard for me, with every structural advantage, how much harder must it be for someone who doesn’t have the resources and circumstances that I do?
That’s why this matters. This is not a distant issue. It is the suffering of real people. Some of them are our children. Some of them are our friends and neighbors. As students of the Way, we vow to end suffering, not to look away from it. Not to rationalize it. Not to hide behind spiritual detachment or polite neutrality.
Skillful action means we see clearly what is happening, we open our hearts to the pain it causes, and then we ask: What is my role? How do I respond?
This is how we step toward the unattainable Buddha Way, with courage, with sincerity, with vow as our guide.
We all have koans. Mine is gender. Yours may be grief, or addiction, or aging. Racism, parenting, isolation, or illness. Whatever it is, don’t turn away. Live it. Let it teach you.
The Way is not about fixing ourselves. There is nothing to fix. It’s about showing up for reality as it is.
When we embrace the Way, we realize something radical:
There is no contradiction between being different and being whole. No contradiction between being vulnerable and powerful. No contradiction between knowing who you are and letting go of who you are.
We can hold many truths at once. We can be all of it.
And still: not one, not two.
Ordinary mind contains it all. It invites us to let go of striving and simply trust the flow of life as it is, beyond distinctions of right and wrong, beyond fixed notions of identity.
Skillful action doesn’t always have answers. But it does have direction. It moves toward the truth. It meets the moment.
Nansen says the Way can’t be talked about in terms of right and wrong. That’s because it’s bigger. Vaster. “Boundless as the great empty firmament.” The Way isn’t a fixed path. It’s living. Responsive. Intimate.
Ordinary mind is not bound by one or two. It walks freely in the space between.
It’s not a mind full of certainty or a mind that clings to identity.
It listens to a friend cry. It folds laundry. It forgets what it came into the room for.
It walks the dog. It sings in the car. It says “I don’t know.”
It cannot be legislated, erased, or reduced to binary categories.
And perhaps most importantly, ordinary mind acts.
This isn’t abstraction. This is our life.
So the question is:
Are we brave enough to be ourselves? To let go of what we think we know? To meet the world, as imperfect as it is, and yet still vow to heal it?
May we meet this world with ordinary mind. May we meet it with clarity, compassion, and courage. And may we walk the Way, together.
