Free and Easy Wandering is indebted both to a Taoist allegory of nonduality and also to the nondual view of existence-time/Buddha-nature-impermanence in Soto Zen.
The allegory consists of three phases of experience:
• Monkey and Sage —freedom of relating with autonomy (Markings One through Six)
• The Cultivator—freedom of relating with aloneness (Markings Seven through Nine)
• The Hsien—freedom of relating with detachment (Markings Ten through Twelve).

While these phases of experience might suggest a progressive path towards enlightenment, enlightenment is ever-present. However, in Marking One, Monkey has fallen into isolation through misguided thinking. When Sage appears to remind him of his enlightenment, Monkey agrees to go on a journey with him to understand the life of enlightenment. In doing so, they learn about isolation, duality, tolerance, integration, and discrimination. When they unconditionally relax at Marking Six, they enter meditation and become the Cultivator, where they see how the universal nature of light functions to illuminate thinking. Later, in Markings Ten through Twelve, the Cultivator becomes the Hsien, who ultimately learns how thinking and meditation intimately entwine.
Please wander freely through this landscape of abstract markings aided by the signs that show the activity of thinking and meditation in the three phases of the path.