At the start of a new year, it’s almost automatic to feel the pull to change something about ourselves. To set a new direction, make a resolution, finally get it right this time. Even when we’re sceptical of that impulse, it tends to reappear in subtler forms: doing the opposite, rejecting goals altogether, declaring ourselves “aimless.”
In this exchange, Ken points to something more fundamental. When change is driven by comparison, hope, or identity—whether we call it ambition, discipline, or spiritual practice—it often keeps the same pattern running, just dressed up differently. First, last, middle; aim or aimlessness—the train stays on the same tracks.
What he offers instead isn’t a fresh start or a better version of ourselves, but a different relationship with action and time. We still plan. We still take care of what needs to be done. But without depending on the future to justify the present. On New Year’s Day, that translates into neither a promise of reinvention, nor a wish to abandon responsibility, but rather an intention to meet the new year as it actually unfolds. Happy New Year!
From A Trackless Path 9
Paul: So my second question was, you spoke about idealism last night. And then ideology. And I was wondering if aimlessness was a possible cure for this?
Ken: What do you think?
Paul: I think yes.
Ken: Say more. Somebody hand him a shovel, please. [Laughter]
Paul: Well, you said idealism is a form of hope, a basis of comparison. So, the practice of aimlessness, which I admit I don’t understand that well but, it seems to be pointing in the direction of you have no sort of attachment to the results of your actions.
Ken: So, how do you know whether to turn left or right?
Paul: I guess you have to know where you’re going.
Ken: And if you have no aim? Have you studied Alice in Wonderland?
Paul: No.
Ken: Next retreat, required reading for everybody. So Alice is coming along—I think she’s left the White Queen’s party. She’s pretty disoriented by now with all the ups and downs, and ins and outs, and backwards and forwards of Through the Looking Glass. She runs into a Cheshire Cat who’s sitting up in a tree with a grin. Have you ever seen a cat grin? This cat was grinning. “Please, sir, which way should I go?” says Alice.
“Well,” says the Cheshire Cat, “That all depends. Where do you want to go?”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” said Alice.
See, aimless, right?
Then the Cheshire Cat said, “Well, then it doesn’t really matter which way you go, does it!”
And Alice says, “Well, as long as I get somewhere.”
To which the Cheshire Cat replies, “Well, if you go far enough you’ll be somewhere.”
What do you think?
Paul: I guess she wasn’t very idealistic in the first place.
Ken: Well, that was a jump. How’d you get there?
Paul: She wasn’t like, “I have to go to this particular place, and that’s the only place I can go.”
Ken: And so do you think this works for her, being aimless?
Paul: From what I know of the story, no.
Ken: Okay. When we’re trying to change how we approach the world we have to be quite careful. One of the things that’s good to keep in mind is that the opposite of a reaction is still a reaction.
So, I have a student—this is so absurd—he always made it a point to be first in line. So I told him, “I want you to change this.” You know what he did?
Paul: He always went last.
Ken: Exactly.
Paul: He always went last in line.
Ken: That’s exactly what he did. He was always the last in line! So I said—and this is where it got really absurd—“First, clearly defined position, last. You gotta do something different here.” You know what he did? He made sure he was exactly in the middle!
So, the pattern that’s running in this case is: I have to be in a special position. And he just kept redefining it. Okay?
Now, if you think of a pattern or a reaction as a set of train tracks and the train’s going, [makes steam engine sounds] “choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo” people think, I’m gonna change the behavior. They pick up the train, they turn it in the other direction. And now it goes, [makes more steam engine sounds] “choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo.” The problem is it’s running on the same set of tracks.
So having an aim. Being aimless. Same set of tracks. Now what? The real challenge here is how do you get off the tracks? How are you going to do that?
You’re so glad you asked this question, aren’t you? Well, let me give you a little help. There’s a book How to Cook Your Life by Dögen and Uchiyama. Dögen writes the root text. It’s instructions to the head cook in the monastery. Commentary is by Uchiyama. And I think it is one of the best books I’ve come across that really describes how to live in awareness. You might find it helpful. You have the book? Yeah. How many times?
Paul: Three or four.
Ken: Good. Yeah. So there’s a section in which he’s commenting on Dögen’s instructions, “When all of these matters are taken care of then the officers meet and can set the menu for the next day and prepare tomorrow’s gruel.” Say, oatmeal.
And Uchiyama’s commentary goes something like this: When you are preparing tomorrow’s oatmeal, you are not setting up a goal for tomorrow because you have no idea what is going to happen. In the night there could be an earthquake, fire, riots, whatever. So you actually have no idea whether that gruel is actually going to be served or not, or anybody’s going to eat it. But you prepare tomorrow’s gruel as tonight’s work. You do what needs to be done. Not with any aim for the future but because it is tonight’s work.
Because the human condition is, there is an order to life, there is structure, and so forth. And it is subject to disruption at any time because of impermanence. The order you can view as the karma element. The disruption is the impermanence element. And we live in this absolute paradox which, in traditional terms is, "We’re definitely going to die and we have no idea when." Or in more everyday things, "Yes, I need to plan to do this and yet I have no idea whether I will experience the results of my efforts."
This is quite different from clinging to an aim and the result, or being aimless and having no result. You follow? So, whether it’s in family, or in our work, we think about what is necessary—to take care wife, family, so forth—or our responsibilities at work, but we do so without any expectation of experiencing those results.
And that becomes quite powerful. Because when we are not attached to the experience of those results, which is the direction most people go, then we find we’re much freer to see what really needs to be done. If you see what I mean.