It might be more useful to the English reader […] to write in our vulgar language.

Two people stand at opposite ends of the room, as in playing shuttlecock […]

So I started housecalling myself. The door always opened. I went around housecalling for five months in Charlotte and the surrounding rural area.

JOAN SUTHERLAND is a Zen teacher and a translator of Chinese and Japanese. She is a co-founder of Pacific Zen Institute, where she is now senior teacher emerita.