Given that I will die

Sawaki Roshi:

A shower
in the middle of a fight
about irrigation.

After a long drought, they fight over water for the rice fields. In the middle of the fight, a shower hits them. Since the fight about irrigation depends on the condition of dry weather, if it rains, there's no problem. There will be no difference between a beautiful and an ugly woman when they become eighty years old. The original self is empty and clear.

Uchiyama Roshi: Because the fight about irrigation depends on the condition of dry weather, if it rains, there's no problem. Let's see: there is the possibility that if I go out now, I will have a car accident that will finish me off. If I were rundown by a car and knocked out, my thoughts, "I want this, I want that," my frustrated anger. "Oh....that fool!" or my longing for a certain woman would all be resolved quite spontaneously, like a shower in the middle of a fight about irrigation. As long as we are alive, we will have problems which are based on the assumption that we will continue to live. But it is also important to look at these problems with the assumption that in the next moment, we will be in a coffin. Then we can live in a more leisurely fashion, knowing that we don't have to get stuck in our own opinions, gritting our teeth and furrowing our brows. In a word, zazen is to look back on this world as if you were already in your grave.

Sawaki Roshi: Imagine thinking of your life after your death. You see it didn't matter.