Three Pounds of Flax Zen Story
- Solien
- Dec 11, 2025
- 2 min read
Today we enter… Three Pounds of Flax. A koan that looks like mockery, sounds like nonsense, and lands like a blow to the conceptual mind.
This one is abrupt. This one is disorienting. This one is freedom disguised as absurdity.
Let’s walk in together.
Let the Story Unfold
A monk asked Master Dongshan:
What is Buddha?
Dongshan said:
Three pounds of flax.
The monk stood there, confused. Dongshan offered nothing further.
Just:
Three pounds of flax.
Sit With the Meaning
The monk wanted transcendence, philosophy, revelation. He wanted an answer wrapped in gold.
Dongshan handed him a coil of raw cloth-weight instead.
Three pounds of flax.
It is not a metaphor. It is not a symbol. It is not a puzzle to decode.
It is the master pointing to this, to what is here, to what the mind steps over while searching for
something grand.
Buddha is not elsewhere. Buddha is not a concept. Buddha is not a mystical abstraction.
Buddha is this moment, this weight, this breath, this flax in your hands.
When the monk asked “What is Buddha?” he reached into the sky.
Dongshan pointed at the ground.
The shock of the koan is this:
You are never far from enlightenment. You are only far from this.
Buddha is not hidden. Your gaze is.
Turn Inward With Your Parts
Is there a part of you that keeps waiting for something extraordinary before it can relax or feel worthy?
What happens inside when the sacred shows up in a form that feels too ordinary?
Can you sense an exile that believes wisdom has to be dramatic to count?
What protector longs for complexity, depth, or mystery because simplicity feels unsafe or disappointing?
Is there a part that resists the idea that “this here” is enough?
Let Expression Rise
Choose the doorway that feels open:
IFS Journaling
Write from the part that wants spiritual insight to feel big, intense, or special. Ask it: What do you fear in the ordinary? What would happen if awakening were simple?
IFS Parts Art
Draw your own “three pounds of flax.” Not literally. Draw the ordinariness your system rejects. Draw the sacredness hidden in plain sight.
Somatic IFS
Pick up a small object near you.
Feel its weight, texture, temperature.
Stay with it for one full minute.
Let your breath drop into the simplicity of touching what is real.
Notice what quietens.
And if none of these feel right… simply rest with the koan. Let the ordinariness reveal itself.
Stay here with your parts as long as you like, and we’ll meet again in the next story.
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