On 'Look Beneath Your Feet'

kan kyakka — Look Beneath Your Feet.

On the origin

Attributed to the Chan monk Yuanwu Keqin. One night his teacher Wuzu Fayan walked a dark road with his three foremost disciples; the lamp went out, and to the question in the dark Keqin answered, ‘Look at your feet.’ The tale is handed down as the night talk of the three. It is also written as shōko-kyakka. The line appears in Case 22 of the Blue Cliff Record. The exact source of the anecdote is not fixed.

On the reading

A turning of the gaze from the distance back to the ground one stands on. When the lamp goes out and the road ahead disappears, the only certainty is the step beneath the foot. The way is not somewhere far off; it is the earth the foot already touches. The same word is said to live in the act of setting one’s shoes straight at the threshold.

On the garment

The seal for this phrase was hand-carved in Tokyo by the artist Satake Hōsen. The front carries this phrase’s seal; the back and inside label carry the Hōsen seal (寳千), printed in vermilion.

The garment is Bella + Canvas 3001 (short sleeve) or Gildan 2400 (long sleeve). A vessel for the word, not the subject itself.

― hosen, tokyo