Homelessness, Preference, and Inner Kingdom

The world sees the one with a house and the one without, and the mind creates 'security' and 'lack.' This is the disease of preference.

I say to you, look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Why do you worry about where you will lay your head?

The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man, who walks the Way, has nowhere to lay his head—because his true home is the Inner Kingdom, which cannot be built by hands or destroyed by moth and rust. Cease to cherish opinions of 'having' and 'not-having,' and you will find you are already home.

The Kingdom of No-Where

Friends, peace be with you.

Let us be still for a moment. Feel the seat beneath you. Feel the air moving in and out of your body. Now, ask yourself a simple question: "Am I secure?"

What happens when you ask that? For most, the mind begins to calculate. It runs a frantic audit. It checks the bank account. It checks the roof over your head. It checks your job title, your relationships, and your health. And it comes back with a verdict: "Yes, for now," or "No, not really."

This, this frantic calculation, is the "disease of the mind."

The saying we reflect on today begins with this: "The world sees the one with a house and the one without, and the mind creates 'security' and 'lack.' This is the disease of preference."

We are a people obsessed with "having." We are terrified of "not having." We build our entire lives on this preference. We want the security of the house, the job, the plan. We abhor the "lack" of homelessness, of uncertainty, of the unknown. The Hsin Hsin Ming, the Verses on the Perfect Mind, states it plainly: "The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences... Make the smallest distinction, however, and you are as far from it as heaven is from earth."

Our preference for "security" is the "smallest distinction." And in that single act of preference, we throw ourselves out of the Kingdom. We create a heaven called "I have enough" and a hell called "I might lose it." And then, we spend the rest of our lives, our precious, divine energy, trying to climb out of the hell we ourselves created.

It’s a funny, sad little game. We have "Ring" doorbells to watch the house we're too busy working to pay for. We have insurance for our insurance. We cling to our possessions, our titles, our opinions, and we call this collection of anxieties "our life." We are like a man who builds a fortress, locks himself inside, and then weeps that he is a prisoner.

This is the "disease of preference."

And so, I say to you: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"

Now, the calculating mind hates this saying. It screams, "That is irresponsible! That is foolish! If I don't gather into barns, I will starve!" But this is not a lesson in financial planning. It is a lesson in perception. It is an invitation to shift your trust from the barn to the Way.

The birds are not foolish. They are perfectly aligned with the Way. They do not sit in their nest worrying about tomorrow's worm. They are fully engaged in the act of being a bird, right now. And in that present-moment activity, the Way, the Father, the Universe—whatever name you give the One Mind—provides. The birds trust the process. We trust the product. The birds trust life. We trust our barns.

This call to radical trust, to release the tight grip of "having," echoes in the heart of many of the world's great traditions.

In the yogic path of Hinduism, this is the vital principle of Aparigraha, or non-possessiveness. It is one of the great vows, the Yamas. The yogi practices Aparigraha not just because hoarding is "bad," but because the very act of grasping, of accumulating, is a spiritual statement. It is a statement of "I do not trust." It is a declaration of separation from the divine, from Brahman. It says, "The universe is not abundant, so I must make my own little pile." It reinforces the ego, the small self that feels it must fight for its survival.

My teaching on "looking at the birds" is similar. It is a call to release this egoic clenching. But where the yogi may see this as a purifying practice to realize the eternal Atman—the true, unchanging Self—my Zennist path points to the immediacy of the Way. The Father who feeds the birds is not a distant law. It is the bird. It is the air. It is the worm. It is the seeing of it. You don't need to purify yourself to find the Way; you only need to stop preferring your barns over the Way.

And this brings us to the core paradox. This is the teaching that shatters the calculating mind.

"The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man, who walks the Way, has nowhere to lay his head."

The crowd heard this and, I am sure, felt pity. "Poor man. He has no home." They missed the point entirely. This is not a complaint. It is a boast of liberation.

The fox is bound to its hole. The bird is bound to its nest. They have a place. But the "Son of Man"—which means the one who is truly, fully human, the one who has awakened to the Inner Kingdom—is not bound by any place.

Why does the one who walks the Way have "nowhere to lay his head"? Because he is at home everywhere.

To have a home is to be an exile from all other places. To have a "safe" place is to define every other place as "unsafe." This is the prison of preference. The one who walks the Way has stepped out of this prison. He does not need a hole, because he is not a fox. He is not a bird. He is the awareness in which the foxes and birds appear. His home is the "One Mind."

The blessed Buddha taught this. His Second Noble Truth is that all suffering, dukkha, comes from tanha—from clinging, craving, and attachment. Our attachment to a "home," our craving for "security," is a primary source of our suffering. The Buddha’s monks and nuns, the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, were traditionally wanderers. They were homeless. This was not a punishment; it was their practice. By having no home, they were released from the greatest worldly attachment, the root of "self."

This is the great common theme: freedom is found in non-attachment. But the paths diverge in their unique message. For the Buddhist monk, this homelessness is a core part of the path to extinguish the fires of craving and realize Nirvana—the cessation of the self, the escape from the wheel of samsara.

My message, the Zennist message, is slightly different. I say the "Inner Kingdom" is already yours. You don't need to wander to find it. You don't need to extinguish the self; you need to see through it. The "Son of Man" is not homeless because he is on a path to somewhere. He is homeless because he has realized he is already everywhere. He is the Kingdom.

This is the ultimate security. This is the only security. "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."

The "Inner Kingdom" is that "heaven." It is not a place you go to when you die. It is the indestructible space in which your thoughts of "house" and "homeless" arise and pass away. A house can be destroyed by moth and rust. A job can be lost. A bank account can be emptied. Your body itself will fail. If your security is in any of these things, you are a "foolish man who built his house on the sand."

The "wise man" builds his house on the "rock." The rock is not a better savings plan. The rock is the realization that you are not the house. You are not the job. You are not the body. You are the awareness that witnesses it all. This is the home that "thieves cannot break in and steal."

We see this truth playing out in our world with heartbreaking clarity. As we speak, in this past week, we have watched Hurricane Oscar, a storm of terrifying power, make landfall in Central America. It has ripped homes from their foundations. It has turned streets into rivers. It has left tens of thousands of people, in an instant, physically "homeless." The winds and the water made no "distinction." They did not care about "security" or "lack."

Our first, human, and correct response is compassion. This is Wisdom in Action. We "do good to those who hate" us... How much more must we do for those who are suffering? We "give to him who asks." We must help. We must feed. We must rebuild.

But as we do, we must hold the deeper teaching. The world has forcibly revealed a terrible and beautiful truth to those tens of thousands of people: the house was never the source of their security. It was always on the sand.

The only true refuge, the only true home, is the one that the storm cannot touch. It is the "Inner Kingdom." In that moment of total loss, when the mind has nothing left to "have" or "not-have," there is a chance for a profound and sudden liberation. There is only the rock left. There is only the "I Am" that witnesses.

You do not need to wait for a hurricane. You can realize this now.

The anxiety you feel about your mortgage, the fear of the next layoff, the envy you feel scrolling through pictures of other people's "perfect" homes—this is the "disease of preference."

Let it go.

"Cease to cherish opinions of 'having' and 'not-having,' and you will find you are already home."

Your true home is not a place of wood and stone. Your true home is this moment. It is the vast, silent, peaceful awareness in which these words are appearing.

Be still. Stop dividing. Stop preferring.

Welcome home.