The Monk Who Gazed at the Moon
No Place Beyond This
The courtyard was quiet in the late evening. Stone tiles still held the warmth of the day, and above the temple roofline the moon hung full and pale, suspended in the open sky.
Feng Dao De (馮道德) stood beneath it, feet rooted, spine upright. His arms were raised, hands held loosely before his face, framing his vision without strain. He was not fixing his gaze or concentrating. He was simply standing, breathing, gazing.
This was the posture Du Tian Yin (杜天陰) had given him.
At first, Feng Dao De treated it as a method. He assumed the posture was meant to lead somewhere—toward insight, toward clarity, toward something beyond itself. Years of study had taught him that practice was a means and understanding was the goal.
Yet night after night, nothing unfolded that way.
The moon did not become symbolic.
The posture did not dissolve into meaning.
Thoughts came and went without resolving into answers.
What remained was the simple fact of standing: weight balanced, breath settling, vision steady. Without trying to calm the mind, the mind grew quieter. Without directing attention, attention gathered.
One evening, Du Tian Yin approached and stood beside him. The master did not instruct or correct. He took the same posture and gazed in the same way.
After a long while, Feng Dao De spoke softly.
“Am I meant to look beyond this?”
Du Tian Yin replied, “Beyond what?”
“The posture,” the disciple said. “The moon.”
The master smiled faintly.
“You keep assuming something must be left behind,” he said. “But nothing here is in the way.”
They stood together in silence. Moonlight spread evenly across the courtyard stones. In that stillness, Feng Dao De noticed something he had not seen before—not an idea, but a shift in experience.
When he stopped expecting the posture to reveal something else, effort fell away. The body aligned without adjustment. The breath deepened on its own. The restless scanning of the eyes softened, and with it, the subtle tension behind thought.
Du Tian Yin did not explain this with words; he adjusted only the rhythm of the breath, lengthening the out-breath one night, softening the in-breath the next, allowing different internal qualities to reveal themselves. In this way, as taught in the Flying Phoenix Heavenly Healing Meditations, Feng Dao De received the teaching directly—through changing breath ratios that awakened a distinct, self-organizing healing energy arising naturally within the body.
Seeing no longer reached outward. It became the present moment.
The posture was not pointing to the moon. It was allowing awareness itself to become clear.
Later, Feng Dao De asked how he would know when he had understood.
Later, Feng Dao De asked how he would know when he had understood.
Du Tian Yin answered, “When standing is just standing, and gazing is just gazing.”
Standing, Seeing, and the Quieting of the Mind
Practices like this have often been described as symbolic or philosophical, but standing Chan has always been something more direct. Long before it was studied, it was known to settle the body and clarify the mind—not by force, but by alignment.
Research by Jian et. al published in 2021 now echoes what practitioners observed intuitively. Standing practices that combine upright posture, minimal movement, and calm attention reliably shift the nervous system toward coherence. Brain activity becomes more synchronized. Mental agitation decreases. Emotional tone stabilizes. Attention gathers without strain.
What is striking is that these effects do not depend on visualization, interpretation, or belief. They arise simply through standing, breathing, and allowing perception to rest.
This is why Du Tian Yin does not tell Feng Dao De to abandon the posture once insight appears. There is nothing to discard. The posture is not a finger pointing elsewhere; it is already participating in what it reveals.
Ryōkan once wrote that the moon and the finger are neither the same nor different. In the same way, posture and clarity are not two separate things. When the body settles, seeing settles. When seeing settles, the mind no longer needs to grasp.
In that moment, there is no need to choose between form and meaning, practice and realization.
There is simply standing beneath the moon—
and seeing clearly.
Jiang, T., Li, H., Dong, X., & Zhang, G. (2021). Effects of Chan-Chuang on physical and mental health: A literature review. International Journal of Martial Arts, 7, 48–64.
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