I recently sat down with an old friend—a Zen teacher who has been practicing since he was thirteen. I brought him a question that most of us carry: What does a human actually need to find what they are looking for? He didn’t offer abstract philosophy or quiet poetry. Instead, he shared a raw, six-year experiment from the streets. This was his answer.
I went to visit an old friend, a Zen teacher who has practiced Zen since he was thirteen years old. I asked him, “What does a human need in order to find what they want?”
This is what he told me:
“Once, many years ago, I decided to get a hold of something I wanted. It was scattered in the streets. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know how to get it or where to find it.
So I went outside and started looking for it.
Sometimes I found it. But I wanted more, and I didn’t know how to get it. I kept going. I didn’t think about it much, but I soon realized that all I had to do was go forward—to create momentum.
I discovered that nature favors movement.
So I just kept going. Sometimes I stopped and thought about this thing that I wanted to get. I used to go all night just to find one or two of these things. But I kept going every night, every day. Slowly but surely, I started learning things about the way, and about that one thing I wanted most.
I started finding more of them.
It became roughly 70% movement and 30% thinking about what to do next. Go around. Know your terrain. Pick the right hours. Eliminate obstacles purely by trial and error. When there is one, there is the other. Why are they there? What day is today? Is there a holiday? Is there a sabbatical? The seasons are changing, the weather is changing, and you still have to be there and get that thing that you want.
When you start, you cannot control or think about all these forces at once. You cannot control the rain, the wind, or the difference between night and day. Don’t waste your time trying to control what is out of your hands. They will present themselves at the right moment along the way. All you have to do is immerse yourself in them and understand them as they come. When it rains, you cannot stop the rain; you can only understand the world is changing around you and adapt. Once you immerse yourself in these forces, the way to what you want reveals itself.
When the weather is really rough, stay inside your home. Think about places you haven’t thought of where you might get your hands on that thing you want. You have the time to think. You start learning that every time you fail, you have to move forward and spend more time trying to get what you want. If your goal was to do it in three hours, open yourself to the opportunity to do it in five hours instead.
Eventually, everything becomes coordinated: the right day, the right time, the right weather. You didn’t have to think about all of these things together when you started your journey. When you spend most of your effort on movement, you get the chance to encounter something you want that will point you to your next discovery.
People waste their time thinking. The more they think, the less they do to get where they want to go or find what they want to find. People should always move before they think. People should always create momentum before thinking.
The reason for this is that the idea of getting something is, at least in the beginning, an amorphic idea. Thinking cannot help you with amorphic subjects. To comprehend amorphic subjects, you either have to spend thirty years meditating to reach a kind of Buddhist enlightenment, or do the exact opposite: start just by creating movement.
You basically know what you want. Start moving. If you have to go somewhere where this thing is available, start going there without even thinking about it.
When you reach your first point, reassess your situation. Maybe it is time to stop and think, but do not let opportunity pass you by. Open your ears, open your eyes, and open your mind to new encounters—not just human encounters, but new places, new routes, somewhere you haven’t been yet.
When you create movement, you create reaction. It does not matter which reaction you are going for, whether from a human or nature itself. Both react the same. Newton’s Third Law encapsulates everything, including our internal feelings.
Create the movement. Open your eyes, open your ears, and open your heart. Things will start happening on their own. You will see that your action created a reaction. Most of the time it will be subtle, so you have to pay attention. But sometimes, you finally hit the motherload. And two weeks later, you’re scraping shit off the floor.
I did this experiment for six years in the city. I can confirm that just by creating movement, you create enough reactions to get hints about where you want to go or what you want to find.
By creating movement, you also teach yourself to rely solely on a feeling. I tell myself to go north because that’s what my heart is telling me. So I go north. But on the other hand, I need to be in my house in one hour. So I will take that trip north, but I will do it in thirty minutes so I have another thirty minutes to make up and get home on time. This creates the equilibrium between yourself, time, place, nature, and natural movement.
In order to get what you really want, you have to create movement. You just have to know one thing and go from there. When you get there, you start the whole process again until you get the next hint that takes you to the right place.
People have made fortunes on the idea of allegedly summoning what they want. But it is not summoning. You do not summon anything. You are just pointing yourself to the right place. When you get to that first place, you create movement to get to the next level. Life is all about circles, and eventually, you start moving between different circles in order to get what you want.
And then you will see the real magic. Yes, it’s a proven fact: when you reach certain circles, you get enough hints to go after what you want. It’s not a short process; it’s a lifestyle.
This is the essence of the artist. The artist needs nothing but that one thing to fall in love with.”
I looked at him and asked, “So, did you get what you wanted in the end?”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “I became somewhat of an expert at taking amorphic ideas and turning them into momentum—into a single function. I didn’t have to force my brain. Somewhere along the way, the answers just popped out whenever I needed them. I became one with what I was trying to find.
People who want to sell books love to tell you that the universe is working with you, or bending itself to accommodate your desires. That’s a comforting story, but reality is the exact opposite. The universe isn’t changing for you; you are the one who learned. You learned the terrain, you learned the weather, the time of day, and where and when to be present. You simply came to understand how things work along the way.
What people call ‘intuition’ is nothing more than that deep understanding paired with total concentration on what you want. But real concentration isn’t an archer staring blindly at a target. True focus is understanding all the forces surrounding you and moving with them. You see this in cats: a cat has sharp sight and hearing, yet you can surprise him when he’s focused because he becomes so immersed in his pursuit that the background disappears. That level of focus turns the world, in your little niche, into something completely pinpointed on what you seek.
A year goes by. Seasons come and go, and you still have to go out there and try again. The lessons are so many, and sometimes they are more rewarding than the thing itself—just learning how to do it in one sweep: to go out, find it, and return home.
If you manage to do this, you can apply these lessons everywhere: in personal relationships, at work, and with your children. They teach you patience and satisfaction. Most importantly, they give you that state people call ‘mindfulness.’ I hate that word—it gives the process a spiritual narrative. There is nothing spiritual about it. It is nothing but reverse meditation.”