Tips for Working on Koans, Part 1 (2025-02-D1-JPC)

7:29PM Feb 26, 2025

Speakers:

Jissai Prince-Cherry

Keywords:

koan practice

breath practice

shikantaza

mind unification

three pillars

wood carver story

bell frame

zazen practice

counting breath

panoramic awareness

koan memorization

non-literal interpretation

sincere questioning

enlightenment

four vows

Today is the first day of this February, 2025, two day seshin. And I'd actually had another subject in mind for this, seshin, but as some of you might know, my mother passed away four weeks ago today. So for the past month, all that has been on my mind has been my mom. So rather than offering the talks I planned on doing, I'll be speaking on a subject that I've wanted to talk about for a while, and the circumstances just were never right. Now is the time, and that subject is working on a koan from beginning to end, so from the assignment of that koan to the authentication of insight. Now I realize that not everyone here is working on a koan. Some folks are not ready, still taming the mind. There are some that are ready but just hasn't, haven't been assigned one yet. I met some of those folks this morning, and then there are some who may have worked on a koan, or may not have or have no interest. That's okay too, because in the process of speaking on this subject, I'll also address the other practices that we do, breath practice and shikantaza. And I'll be reading passages, not not whole sections, but reading passages from this book that some of you may know, the three pillars of Zen. I

uh, first, I'm going to start with a story. And this story, if you've, if you've done any sessions with me before, you've heard this story before, more than once, and because it's it beautifully illustrates the refinement of mind that happens with practice, regardless of what our practice might be. And although the in the story, it's a refinement that happened over happens over days. For some it happens over over years. Certainly, what's the case for me? Or weeks, months, moments

so here's the story. A wood carver called Ching had just finished work on a bell frame. Everyone who saw it marveled for it seemed to be the work of spirits. When the Duke of Lu saw it, he asked, what sort of genius is yours that you could make such a thing? The wood carver replied, Sire, I am only a simple workman. I am no genius. But there is one thing when I am going to make a bell frame, I meditate for three days to calm my mind. When I have meditated for three days, I think no more about rewards or emoluments. When I have meditated for five days, I no longer no longer think of praise or blame skillfulness or awkwardness. When I have meditated for seven days, I suddenly forget my Lin, my body, no, I forget my very self. I lose consciousness of the court and my surroundings. Only my skill remains in that state, I walk into the forest and examine each tree until I find one in which I see the bell frame and all its perfection. Then my hands go to the task, having set myself aside nature. Meets nature and the work that is performed through me, this, no doubt, is the reason why everyone says that the finished product is the work of spirits.

Now that's the end of the story. Now I'll read something from the three pillars of Zen. Remember, the three pillars of Zen is, it's primarily the teachings of Roshi kapless Teacher, Hakuin Yasutani, Roshi, but Roshi Kapleau also speaks, and so I will whenever I'm reading a passage, I'll make sure you know who's talking. So this is Yasutani Roshi.

This is what he says, the first aim of sitting is to unify the mind. We've just started on this seshin, and knowing this can be helpful. The first aim of sitting is to unify the mind. He continues. For the average person whose mind is being pulled in many directions, sustained concentration is virtually impossible. Through the practice of zazen, the mind becomes one pointed so that it can be controlled. Now, a word that means more to me than control is directed. So it can be directed, so her attention can be directed. It reminds me, I live in my neighborhood, there is an elementary school, and during lunch, I'll go for a walk, and in the big school yard, there will be all of these elementary school children running around. There may be a group racing each other, another group playing skipping rope, another group playing kickball, all these kids multiple classes intermingling with each other in this big schoolyard, and at a signal from from a teacher, all of that teacher students will gather around The teacher, and the teacher will line them up, make sure everybody's there, and they will walk back into the school building in single file, moving as One unit, focused unified when they're all running pell mell in the school yard, there's no focus there. It's once they're gathered together, then they can be aimed, focused into the school building. That's really what we're doing in zazen, unifying the mind so we can focus it. And our first practice for unifying the mind is the counting of the breath, counting the inhales and the exhales. So when we inhale, we count one for the entire length of the inhale, and then exhale, two for the entire length of the exhale, all the way up to 10. And then when we get to 10, if we get to 10, we return to one if soon as we notice that the mind has wandered, we return to one.

It's a mind training like, like, like, training a puppy to use the paper, bringing it back to the paper, over and over and over again. The focus is on the breath. The counting is a support. It's kind of like that. Stair handrail on the stairwell. So like if you were to go out of the Zen do make a left to go to those three bathrooms at the bottom of the stairs, you're going to encounter the handrail the stronger and steadier you are on your feet, the less you need the handrail. But when you need some support, it's there. And it's the same in practice that when you are counting the inhales and exhales, and you start to get stronger and steadier in the mind. Say, for 15 minutes you're able to maintain the count. Then you need less counting to continue refining the mind. And then you go to counting just the exhales and experiencing being aware of the inhales a little harder to do, because we no longer have the count on The inhale to lash ourselves to the breath, we have to work a little more. And then when we're able to do that for around 15 minutes, then we drop the counting entirely and just experience the breath, the inhales, the exhales, clearly following them. And once we're able to do that, then we have some other choices. We can continue doing breath practice becoming more and more intimate with the breath, or we can drop the focus on the breath and do shikantaza, or begin working on a koan and

first

let's talk about shikantaza.

Breath practice really sets us up to be able to work on shikantaza, for many people, and this is what I say to people, how you know when to move on from one to another is when the counting becomes like a burden, then you know that It's time to do less counting. You know for yourself that it's time to do less counting, and when the focus on the breath becomes restrictive, then we know it's time for change, and that change could be to shikantaza, relaxing, letting go of that focus on the breath. It's like, it's like, just going up and down the stairwell. When you have this whole building so shikantaza opens us up panoramic awareness. I often describe the difference between a concentration practice, like a breath practice or koan practice, the difference between that and shikantaza like It's like walking into a dark room and for a concentration practice, it's like walking into this room and turning on a flashlight and shining that flashlight beam in a specific place, and everything else is in darkness. We're focusing on one thing, whereas shikantaza is more like walking into that dark room and flicking on a light switch. Everything is Illuminated all at once equally, no focus on anything in particular, panoramic awareness you. No picking and choosing.

Roshi Kapleau puts it shikantaza Like this. The very foundation of shikantaza is an unshakable faith that sitting as the Buddha sat with the mind, void of all conceptions, of all beliefs and points of view, is the actualization or unfoldment of the inherently enlightened bodhi mind with which we are all endowed. At the same time, this sitting is entered into in the faith that it will one day culminate in the sudden and direct perception of the true nature of this mind. In other words, enlightenment.

Shikantaza is a, is a can be a difficult practice, but immensely rewarding.

So after breath practice, you can move to shikantaza, or you can begin work on a breakthrough, koan, a first koan, you probably all know that these koans are were from ancient times. They are dialogs between a master and and their student, or between two masters. It could be lines from a Sutra or or lines from from the Master's talk. These, these are teaching stories, just like the one I read at the opening of this talk. These teaching stories help us to wake up and to make real in our lives what we've waken up to, they're often couched In what seems to be baffling or paradoxical language. But they only seem paradoxical when we are boxed in to our own words and concepts, our own definitions. Koan koans use words and concepts to get beyond words and concepts. People will often look at these koans as if they have no applicability to oneself. This is, these are. We're different people at different times, another time, another place. These. Many of them are monastics. Most are so it's easy to think that there's no relevance to our lives, but that's not true at all. I'll give you an example. This is from a dokan encounter with Hakuin Yasutani Roshi and one of his students, and I'm going to read the entire encounter. It's short, and the student is working on a koan. And this is what, what she says. The student is a woman, age 37 my koan is from where you are. Stop the distant boat moving across the water, Roshi demonstrate your understanding of the spirit of it. And then the student demonstrates that is good, but try it this way. And then, yeah, so ta Roshi demonstrates, do you understand the true spirit of this student? Yes, the boat and I are not too Roshi, that's right. When you become one with the boat, it ceases to be a problem for you. The same is true of your daily life. If you don't separate yourself from the circumstances of your life, you live without anxiety. In summer, you adapt yourself to heat. In winter to cold. If you are rich, you live the life of a rich man. If you are poor, you live with your poverty and. Were you to go to heaven, you would be an angel. Were you to fall into hell, you would become a devil. In Japan, you lived like a Japanese. In Canada, like a Canadian lived this way. Life isn't a problem. Animals have this adaptability to a high degree. Human beings also have it, but because they imagine they are this or that, because they fashion, they fashion notions and ideas of what they ought to be or how they ought to live, they are constantly at war with their environment and themselves. The purpose of this koan, then is to teach you how to be at one with every aspect of your life.

So koans have every thing to do with us, right here, right now. So how do we work on a koan now, what I'll be saying today and tomorrow applies to a breakthrough koan or to a subsequent one. But because I want to focus on the process of working on a first koan, that's what we will focus on again from beginning to end. And on this journey, we'll be walking through a koan that is not from our curriculum, but one introduced by my mother. It's, I call it the prince family koan, which I'll say more about later, before beginning work on a koan. Of course, the mind is is tamed a bit through the through the other practices to breath practice, and then when the teacher feels right that the student is ready, they may suggest it. When it comes to choosing which of this, of the breakthrough koans sit there, seems to, we seem to be adding more and more to them. Which is quite nice. You may feel a greater affinity for one or another. When choosing which one go with your gut, working on koans is an intuitive process. Might as well start from the beginning, instead of going with the popular one, going with the one that maybe your teacher did, or going with the one you think you should do. Whichever one pops for you. Go with that one. Koans are signed generally before seshin to give you hours and hours of time with it, and frequent dokans to really sink your teeth in the first step in working on a koan is to memorize it. Now, most of the breakthrough koans in our tradition, are quite short. However, some of the subsequent koans can be complex, different parts, different characters. So memorize your koan. Now about the prince family koan, and now I'm the only one that calls it the prince family koan, because I'm the only one that's familiar with koans in my family. But about 20 years ago, my mother began saying this odd farewell to everyone. So when everyone is saying oh goodbye, I'll see you later. Love You, my mom says this, and I'm going to use her North Carolina accent.

Hold on to the line. Don't worry about the horse gone blind.

So this is, this is, this is the translation. Just in case you didn't understand it. Hold on to the line. Don't worry about the horse going blind. Did you get it? All right? Nobody knew what it meant. So if you don't know what it means, don't worry. And no matter how many times she was asked, she would never tell. She would never explain. The second tip with working on a koan is don't take it literally. When my mom first introduced this koan, I knew not to take her words literally. I'd had a lifetime of hearing her folk sayings, or what my siblings and I call her crazy sayings. They made no sense, literally, one I remember really well is this one that that I remember hearing as a child. I was quite clingy and wanted to go everywhere my mother went, but she wouldn't let me, and if I couldn't go, I at least wanted to know where she was going. And this is what she would say. I'd ask her Mom, where are you going? She'd say, I'm going to see a man about a dog. Now, to my child, like mind, I'm thinking, my mom is going to go somewhere and go bring home a new puppy. Every time she came back, I expected her to be bringing a puppy back with her. She didn't. She didn't bring back a new puppy. I eventually learned what she meant she never told me, even to this day, she went to her grave with never having told me, but I figured it out, I'm going to see a man about a dog means, none of your business. Where are you going? Mom? None of your business. I had to resolve that question for myself. Now another example that's using our koan from our own curriculum of koan not to take literally, is the koan mu. So you probably know the story A monk asked Joshu has a dog? Buddha nature or not? Now, dogs were considered to be pretty low creatures at this time. So and the party line is that all beings are perfectly endowed with Buddha nature. So this monk asked, does a dog have Buddha nature or not? And Joshu said, mu, which literally means no or not, or nothing. It's negative. But the backstory is to this is that at other times, Joshu said, Yes, I so this koan, the koan mu has nothing to do with yes or no leaps beyond it, just like the sound of one hand the sound of one hand clapping has nothing to do with sound clapping or no sound or no clapping.

Koans go beyond this, and that goes beyond twoness. Roshi Kapleau said this, every koan is a unique expression of the living, indivisible Buddha Nature, which cannot be grasped by the bifurcating intellect despite the incongruity of their various elements, koans are profoundly meaningful, each pointing to our face before our parents were born, to our real selves, to people who cherish the letter above the spirit. Koans appear bewildering for in their. Phrasing koans deliberately throw sand into the eyes of the intellect to force us to open our mind's eye and see the world and everything in it undistorted by our own concepts and judgments. So don't take koans literally. So what are we to do with a koan

we question it. Wonder about it be curious,

but since questioning or inquiry cannot be forced, most people start out simply repeating it. We're instructed to repeat it continuously. Students will lament, I certainly did lament, not being able to question the koan. Know that if you are repeating it in a concentrated way, concentrating on your koan. You're not wasting your time. You're still consolidating the mind, focusing it, refining your tension. You question. Questioning will come. Working on a koan is kind of like being in a relationship where my romantic relationship or a platonic one. How do we become more intimate with someone by being around them a lot and in different situations, and by asking questions to them, by being curious about them. But there are some limits to the analogy of a relationship. When in our inquiry into a koan, we're not asking someone else, some our teacher, we're not questioning the universe. It's not directed outwardly. This questioning. We're not asking God. This is a self inquiry. We're directing the questioning inwardly, the way that you would if you've lost something. One of the Roshi has lightened. Likened it to to when you've lost your keys,

let's say you're in your house. You got there somehow, maybe drove your car. You had to use your keys to drive your car. You had to use your keys to unlock your door to get in your house. They're your keys. You don't share them with anyone. They're yours. Where did you Where did you put them who hasn't lost their keys? How do we do that? How do we what do we do when we when we've lost our keys? Where are they? Where? Where are my keys? I know They're around here somewhere. Where are they? My Keys, keys. What are the keys? Keys. And in this sincere questioning, we naturally whittle the question down to the nub, the juicy bit,

the core and

this sincere questioning, this state of mind of someone who. Ripped by questioning has been very well described in in one of our other koans. This is a koan from the Mumonkan tozo three barriers, and this is the first barrier in the case. So this is how it goes to set up three barriers to test his monks. And again, we just, I'll just read the first barrier. It's, again, it's describing the state of mind of someone gripped by questioning. To acquire after the truth groping your way through the underbrush is for the purpose of seeing into yourself nature at this moment, where is your nature and

groping your way through the underbrush. When we are sincerely questioning our koan, we're groping our way through the underbrush. It's an uncomfortable, unsettled, unsettling feeling. We can use that to find resolution in the with the prince family koan, after hearing it for so so many years, my siblings and I, my brother and sister, we began saying farewell to each other, using my mother saying So instead of saying goodbye, we'd say, hold on

to the line. Don't worry about the horse going blind.

And for me and and for them too, every time I heard those words, I would be gripped by that question, What? What? What does that mean? Even, even when one of us dismissed it as one of mom's crazy sayings, for me, it didn't lessen my intensity about it, I continue to wonder. The questioning of our koan can gain so much momentum that we're asking all the time we couldn't stop even if we wanted to. Roshi Kapleau said this, it may be asked, How can one concentrate devotedly on a koan and simultaneously focus the mind on work of an exacting nature. In practice, what actually happens is that once the koan grips the heart and mind and its power to take hold is in proportion to the strength of the urge toward liberation, the inquiry goes on ceaselessly in the subconscious while the mind is occupied with a particular task, the question fades from consciousness, surfacing naturally as soon as the action is over, not unlike a moving stream which now and again disappears underground, only to reappear and resume its open course without interrupting its flow. This questioning the koan and being gripped by it. It's almost like a worry in the mind when we say we're we have a financial worry.

We can't let it go.

Every time there's a space in the mind this worry arises. What am I going to do? How am I going to do this?

The koan acts in the same way. So question your koan. I.

It can also help to question it aloud Occasionally, when we and we used to for seven day seshins In the last couple of nights, seshin What was the last night, we would question aloud, as loudly or softly as you, as you wish, as you need to do. It took me years to be able to to do that in a way that consolidated my questioning rather than dispersing it. But saying the words aloud can be helpful too. So question your koan, but drop everything that arises in the mind about it. Don't try to figure it out. This is this wanting to figure out the koan is difficult because, because figuring things out works for everything else that we do. We solve problems by figuring things out, by relying on what we know and filling in the gaps. Koan work is very different from everyday problem solving. The resolution to a koan is not what you think. So don't cling to anything that bubbles up in the mind about it, whatever we're thinking separates us from the bare reality. Our only job in working on a koan is to be completely won with it right now.

Yasutani said to one of his students, mu is nothing you can feel or taste or touch or smell, and if it has shape or form, it's not mu. What you have in your mind is merely a picture of mu. You must discard it so he's saying this to this student in dokan. And then he has a longer dialog with the student, same student, and this one, this is in seshin. He says, you know how to do Zazen properly. You also have an excellent picture of mu, but to actually experience mu, you must discard this portrait of it lodged in your discursive mind. The roots of ego strengthening ideas are deep in the subconscious, out of reach of ordinary awareness, so they are hard to eliminate. To get rid of them, you must become absolutely one with mu when walking, eating, working, sleeping, excreting, you must not only concentrate your mind, but control your eyes as well, for when the eyes aren't riveted down, thoughts arise, the mind stirs, And before you know it, you have parted from mu

insight, opening doesn't come from a mind that knows. A knowing mind is a closed one, an inquiring mind is wide open,

primed,

and we cannot sincerely question. And and no at the same time,

we just can't

one closes off the other.

We've covered a lot. Um, a breath practice shikantaza and some tips on how to work on a koan. We'll have Yasutani Roshi have the last word. He's going to be summarizing how to practice with a koan, and the koan that he'll be talking about will be moved.

So this is what he says as to how to practice. Of course, he talks about what to do with the body. You know how to do that. And then he says, first repeat the word mu, not audibly, but in your mind, concentrate on becoming one with it. Do not think of its meaning. I repeat, just concentrate wholeheartedly on becoming one with mu. At first, your efforts will be mechanical, but this is unavoidable. Gradually, however, all of you will become involved, since the human mind is accustomed from childhood to functioning centrifugally, like the rays of a light bulb, which fan outward, your aim at first is to bring your mind to a focus. After you are able to concentrate on mu, then question yourself. What is mu? What can it be? You must ask the question right from the guts. When the questioning reaches the point of gripping you like a vice, so that you can think of nothing else, suddenly you will perceive your true nature and will exclaim,

oh, now now

I know, with true enlightenment, the problem of suffering and death

is resolved.

All right, our time is up. We'll stop now and recite the four vows we.