ne morning, my teacher and a couple of other monks were preparing to leave the monastery to deliver a Zen workshop three hours away in the Bay Area. It had snowed the night prior, so we drove extra slowly around the narrow, winding road that led us off the property.

As we rounded the last bend, we were faced with an enormous evergreen that had fallen across the road, blocking our way out.

I recall my first thought was, “This must be a sign that we’re not meant to do the workshop today.”

To my amazement, the head monk whispered this very thought out loud to my teacher who sat in the back seat. After a brief chuckle, my teacher remarked, “Or it’s a sign that we get out our chainsaws and cut our way through it!”

That’s exactly what we did. All of us were highly trained to use chainsaws, including my teacher. After heading back to get them, we managed to clear away the tree and the branches enough to allow us safe passage through.

We drove out, delivered the workshop, and transformed lives that day.

I’ll never forget how easily we projected meaning onto what we saw, believed it, and then assumed we should just give up.

How fortunate for us that we had our teacher there to model the art of getting present to a situation and then taking action based on what’s appropriate, instead of believing the voices and assuming that “giving up” is the same thing as “letting go” or “Life’s will.”