Tips for Working on Koans, Part 2 (2025-02-D2-JPC)
7:38PM Feb 26, 2025
Speakers:
Jissai Prince-Cherry
Keywords:
breath practice
shikantaza
working on koans
judgment seat
feeling koan
mu essence
living truth
koan movement
everyday triggers
confirming insight
testing students
shift in perspective
not yet
Zen practice
four vows
Today is the second day of this, February, 2025, two day seshin. And yesterday we covered breath practice and all the variations of breath practice and shikantaza and we started talking about working on koans, so we'll continue that subject today, working on koans, but we'll start with the story.
A woman in a coma was dying. She suddenly had a feeling that she was taken up to heaven and stood before the judgment seat. Who are you? A voice said to her, I'm the wife of the mayor. She replied, I did not ask, whose wife you are, but who you are. I'm the mother of four children. I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are. I'm a school teacher. I did not ask what your profession is, but who you are? And so it went. No matter what she replied. She did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, Who are you? I'm a Christian. I did not ask what religion it is, what what your religion is, but who you are. I'm the one who went to church every day and always help the poor and needy. I did not ask what you did, but who you are. She evidently failed the examination, for she was sent back to Earth. When she recovered from her illness, she was determined to find out who she was, and that made all the difference. That's the end of the story. Yesterday we talked about questioning the koan and and dropping anything that arises in the mind about it. Questioning the koan engages the heart and mind, and our first tip today engages the rest of us. So the tip is to feel the koan, let it move you, and we'll continue reading from the three pillars of Zen. And this is Yasutani Roshi speaking.
He says, mu is the expression of the living, functioning dynamic Buddha nature. What you must do is discover the spirit or essence of this mu, not through intellectual analysis, but by search into your innermost being. Then you must demonstrate before me concretely and vividly that you understand mu as living truth without recourse to conceptions theories or abstract explanations. Remember, you can't understand Mu through ordinary cognition. You must grasp it directly with your whole being. Koan, koans working on a koan can act like music in the body. It's like how some some people will spontaneously start dancing whenever they hear music. Young children will do this. They'll bend their knees and shake their little hips and wave their arms and sway their heads. There's no self consciousness. There no no thought about skillfulness or awkwardness.
We can have the same with our koan. Let the questioning enter your body. Let it. Move you. So here's here's an example. Listen to this particular koan. Go beyond concepts words and definitions of the words that you hear. It's like you have to expand your definitions and let this koan move you. Feel it in your body. Feel it. It's from the hekigan roku Blue Cliff Record number, 62 ummons, one treasure. This is how it goes. Uman said to the assembled monks between heaven and earth through space and time. There is one treasure hidden in the mountain of form. Pick up a lamp and go into the Buddha Hall. Take the temple gate and place it on the lamp. I
now this is what Roshi Kapleau says, also in the three pillars of Zen about koans ability to move us, he says the great merit of koans, which range over the vast area of the Mahayana teachings, is that they compel us, in ingenious and often dramatic fashion to learn these doctrines, not simply with our head, but with our whole being, refusing to permit us to sit back and endlessly theorize about them in the abstract. What Heinrich Zimmer says about certain types of meditation is especially true of koans, the spirit of which must be demonstrated before the Roshi or the teacher and not merely explained. And then he quotes Heinrich Zimmer, knowledge is the reward of action. For it is by doing things that one becomes transformed, executing a symbolical gesture, actually living through to the very limit a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role suffering its consequences, one fathoms and exhausts its contents.
As you're working on your koan. Let it move you in whatever way grips you and see what happens. Just see
Tip number, our next tip is related question your koan while living your life. So it's not just as you know, for those times when you're in formal sitting, question your koan and in whatever it is that you're doing, wherever you are, if you're at the grocery store, picking up items, if you are going to the bathroom, walking down the hallway, you as was said yesterday, our questioning can gain so much momentum that we're asking all the time, But that doesn't happen by itself. Questioning begets questioning and the beauty of sincere questioning is it empties the mind of everything else. It even empties the mind of a sense of self. There's no room for that. Someone in private instruction said they can't stop questioning, even if they try and.
Yasutani Roshi describes this very ripe condition like this. This is what he says.
He says, When you walk, only mu walks when you eat, only mu eats when you work, only mu works and when you come before me, only mu appears, prostrating yourself. It is mu that prostrates speaking. It is mu that speaks lying down to sleep. It is mu that sleeps, and mu that awakens, having reached the point where you're seeing, your hearing, you're touching, your smelling, your tasting and your thinking are nothing but mu. Suddenly, you directly perceive mu.
We hear accounts of breakthroughs being triggered by mundane, everyday happenings. Some of the stories of the Masters, there's the one who was sweeping and and kicked up a tile or a stone and hearing the sound of that stone or tile striking bamboo, or the sight of plum blossoms, or hearing a temple Bell, or feeling warm bath water on the skin, or we're seeing one's own reflection in Water, everyday stuff. Now, some awakening being triggered by from our everyday Sangha members, people that may be right here in this Zen do sitting right next to you. So an opening being triggered by by being in traffic and hearing the whistle of a traffic cop, or feeling the pain of stubbing one's toe on a bookshelf, Hearing the words of a Dharma talk, anything can trigger an opening, anything.
My own insight into the prince family koan came one day when I was listening to an interview on National Public Radio, NPR. And program was fresh air. It was an interview with an Iditarod, so the dog sled racer, and she would this woman was sharing her experiences and her love of the sport, and she was also plugging her book early in the in the interview, she talked about how she got into dog sled racing. So she was from California, she was a teenager and going to, like, dog sled, sled camp. She She'd never been on a sled before. And the sled being used for beginners like her, it wasn't a sled. It was it was a cart with wheels. And this is what else she said. And just so you know, she says, you know, a lot, and so I'm going to remove some of those so it's not so annoying to hear. So her name is Blair Braverman. This is what she says, you know, the first rule that we learned in dog sledding, and it's the first rule a lot of people learn in dog sledding, is that you don't let go. Because I think people have this idea that if you let go, if you fall off the sled, or if the sled tips over and you let go, the dogs will wait for you, but in fact, they will be just be happier, because they can run even faster and they will keep going. So and you'll be left completely alone in the mountains without even your supplies that are in the sled. So that's like the first instinct that we had to learn. And then she talks about tipping over her sled and being dragged by her dogs for a quarter of a mile before she was able to get the sled upright again. And the interviewer asks her, what was that like? And this is what she says, Well, you can't see, so you have to trust your dogs. You know your lead dogs and the dogs on the team, they can steer, even if you can't. They're going around trees and following the trail, you just get this massive amount of spray in your face. You're just getting coated with snow, just plastered all over your face, and it's like you're bouncing along on your stomach and just trying to hold on with your hands as the sled is bouncing. You know that is every mushers nightmare, losing your team, falling off or letting go.
Hold on the line. Don't worry about, oh, it's going blind.
That insight into my mother's koan brought me to tears, and I was absolutely sure of her meaning, but just as in a traditional Zen koan, Insight has to be confirmed. And that's our next tip, confirming insight. There's nothing more detrimental to practice than thinking that we know capital K No when we don't, because when we know or think we know. We stop questioning, we stop working, we stop opening. So here's more about why testing is done, and this is a student asking Yasutani, why is it necessary to be authenticated by anyone? And this is Yasutani response, starting from the time of the Buddha Shakyamuni. Correct Buddhism has been transmitted from master to disciple where the Master's enlightenment has been authentic and sanctioned by his master, he has been able to sanction the enlightenment of his disciples by using his own experience of enlightenment as a guide. You ask why this is necessary? It is necessary first of all, in order to ensure the transmission of true Buddhism from master to disciple. If this hadn't been done, there would be no authentic Zen today. But the truth is, you can never be sure by yourself that what you take to be Kensho actually is Kensho with the first experience, it is quite possible to misjudge it, the student says this, but isn't enlightenment self authenticating Roshi? No, it isn't. In fact, there are many examples of persons who became teachers without having enlightenment at all. It's like a person searching alone for diamonds in the mountains, if he has never seen a real diamond, he may think, when he finds glass or quartz or some other mineral that he has found a genuine diamond. If he could verify his find through somebody who's had experience with diamonds, he could be sure failing that he could easily mistake. He could easily make a mistake, regardless of how brightly his stones glittered. In our Zen tradition, the teacher tests the student for a shift in perspective that's indicative of awakening, and that shift is is confirmed or not by the students responses. Now I want to go back to Yasutani comment about there are many examples of. Persons who became teachers without having enlightenment at all. And he was talking about Japan, but that's also a phenomenon here in the US. I seem to remember bodhidroshi talking about attending a meeting of the American Zen teachers association, and one of their conversations is, was, what does it what does it take to what do you require to sanction a teacher? What's the minimum? And Bodhi bodhis response was, Ken show enlightenment, and another teacher responded, oh, we have a different model than that.
There are also different models for working on koans. We here do the traditional one on one with the teacher in the dokan row. There are also other Zen traditions that have that, and also have group koan work. I know of a teacher that does that. So in this group, koan work, or this person also does individual work in the similar way, where the group or the individual analyzes the koan compares it to others. There's discussion. It's a more of a intellectual approach. As best as I can tell, students are taught how to find the nub of the koan how to demonstrate it.
And students in such traditions can pass through their entire koan curriculum and become a teacher without having experienced awakening at all. I was so heartened to hear in the instruction room today about someone someone saying that they don't want to just be able to demonstrate the koan. They want insight, because being able to demonstrate a koan doesn't mean that insight has happened.
Some people can hear koan like the one I just read, and be moved by it, and be able to demonstrate it, the spirit of it. I but in our Zen tradition, the teacher is testing for if there has been that shift in perspective. Not just can the person demonstrate this, koan.
When it came to the prince family, koan, my mom confirmed my understanding in a very different way. We were having a conversation on the phone, and she said her farewell, as she usually does,
Hold on the line, don't worry about the horse going blind.
And I said to her, okay, Mom, I won't and there was this pause, and she said, You know what that means. And I said, Yes. And there was this long pause, and finally she said, Don't tell nobody. And then a couple of years later, was having the conversation with my sister. And ended the conversation, we're saying our goodbyes, and I say to her, I.
Hold on the line. Don't worry about the horse going blind. And she said, Okay.
I said, You know what that means. And she said, Ah. Girl, which means yes,
I said, Ah.
And I heard it what my mother must have heard. I heard it in my sister, and knew that she knew. And so I asked her, does our brother know? Does Barry know? And she said, what will be our final tip? She said, not yet. The tip is, get used to hearing not yet.
It might sound like not yet those words, but it's much more likely to sound like dig. It again, digging, digging being rung out of dokan. When I would get rung out of dokan in those early years, I used to think it meant get out of here, you stupid person. You're wasting my time.
But being rung out of dokan, that's not what it means. It's the ultimate act of faith. It means not yet, not no, not ever, just not yet. Go back to the Zen. Do keep going, keep trying. You can do it. You don't need me to give you anything
when we are sincerely working on a koan. We want to resolve it. Questioning, sincerely questioning. When that question grips us, it's uncomfortable, provokes anxiety, groping. Our way through the underbrush was said yesterday. Koans have been called an expedient. Some have called them a shortcut, and like any shortcut, the journey can be rough, going and and we want it to end. We can feel lost, confused. I heard that in the private instruction room yesterday, too. I feel so lost. I feel so confused, which is painful. Zen Master Hakuin referred to them as those vile koans
with all due respect, he said, but growing and evolving involves pain. Maybe this was the case with you, but I know for my sons and for myself when they were going through puberty, going through their growth spurts, they felt pain.
My eldest son had migraines. My youngest son, who grew quite tall, had leg aches. For me. When I was going through puberty and having my I didn't grow up. I grew out. Growing curves was painful. My skin itched for two years. I would rub my mom would rub lotion on my skin and oil on my skin. Still, it would itch as the skin stretched, as I grew boobs and hips and thighs. I.
In Zen practice, especially with koans, growing and evolving, can hurt. We all want certainty. We want to have solid ground underneath our feet. And I believe this inability or unwillingness to to tolerate this, this, this, this quieting feeling of the unknown, might be the reason why some students give up working on their koan. And I think another reason why people might throw in the towel is this pain of having their responses rejected over and over and over again, being rung out of dokan
working On koans can be frustrating, but when the need to see into our true nature is strong. What alternative is there?
What's true of all the practices, not just koan, practice breath, practice shikantaza, at different points, we're going to be lost. We're going to be confused.
You might not know where you're going, you might not know what you're doing, but hang in there. Hang in there.
Hold on the line. Don't worry about the horse gone line.
