Transcript of a conversation with Brian Mayne in July 2026
I recently had a revelation which stemmed from a book on Koans (A ‘koan’ is a paradoxical story, dialogue, or question used in Zen Buddhism. Its purpose is to bypass logical reasoning and trigger an intuitive awakening, or sudden enlightenment, by exhausting the analytical mind) by Ross Bolater*.
When we look in a mirror what we see and claim is our reflected face. What this book suggested was that ‘When we look anywhere else, do we not also see our reflected face?’ In everything, in the books, the scene from the window, the picture on the wall, why isn’t it all me, my reflected face, just as that reflection in the mirror is
To give examples: ‘Show me your face, the face you had before your grandparents were born.’ Or ‘You who Reach the top of a hundred foot pole are not yet finished. Step from the top of the pole and worlds of the 10 directions will be your body.’
There are answers that are not mental or logical ones; they must be experienced. When you step in the 10 directions, it’s actually saying ‘Step everywhere!’ In effect it is also saying: ‘Disappear yourself conceptually. So this is what this reflection relates to: it is not only in the mirror, but in everything that we see. It is for me stepping from the top of that pole.’
* Ross Bolleter is an Australian Zen teacher, composer, and author who created modern koans and wrote books like The Crow Flies Backwards and Other New Zen Koans and Dongshan’s Five Ranks.