2bitmoments 8 koans from Dongshan: koan 109 "best practices" in institutionalized Zen

I am nearly done with the 8 koans I selected from this collection of Dongshan, which I'm not even sure is the best collection of Dongshan koans. link: https://terebess.hu/zen/dongshan-eng.html

-109-

Later the Master asked this monk, "What other teachings does Ta-tz'u have?"

The monk said, "Once, when addressing the assembly, he said, 'To talk about ten feet is not as good as accomplishing a foot. To talk about a foot is not as good as accomplishing an inch.' " 167

"I wouldn't have said it that way," said the Master.

"How would you have said it, Ho-shang?" asked the monk.

"People talk about what they cannot do and do what cannot be talked about," said the Master.

Commentary

167 Ten feet, a foot, and an inch do not correspond exactly to the chang, ch'ih, and ts'un of the Chinese text. A chang contains ten ch'ih, and a ch'ih ten ts'un. A ts'un is slightly more than an inch.

Oxford dictionary:”ho shang” - A Chinese term of respect for a senior monk.

1. I made a post a long time ago in which I said “Talking is not Zen”. Here accomplishing is talked about. What is meant here by accomplishing? What needs to be accomplished or done? What work is important for Zen Masters, this work “that cannot be talked about”? (That work seems important work, and that it can't be spoken of is high praise I think)

2. How can one talk ten feet, how does one measure amount of speech? Or translate any of that into the same measurement as doing?

3. “I wouldn’t have said it that way” is this a polite way to disagree or is he not even disagreeing? Are two ways of seeing the same problem allowed or possible?

4. Commenting on others’ teachings seemed to happen quite a bit. I think it’s particularly important how Zen Masters are commenting on each others “teachings” despite defending a “teaching -less teaching”. But this Zen that can be talked about, that is not wordless: it is not only talkable, but it is comparable, it is measurable. Can one then imagine a “best practices” set of guidelines for Zen Masterhood in a modern corporate Zen organization? A committee of Zen Masters that judge each newly proposed koan and each student or would-be master? Is this reasonable or nonsense?

5. How were the koans agreed upon? How were the collections such as “The Gateless Gate”, “the Blue Cliff Record” agreed upon? Who set the consensus?

I hope you are doing well, commenters, readers and lurkers of r/zen. :D It's a particularly tough time with Coronavirus outbreak and all. With politics maybe a bit haywire in a lot of places in the world. Japan particularly I've heard some really tough things, fraudulent numbers to avoid canceling the Olympics, fraudulent numbers afterwards to "keep face". Not good. But I think Zen has a place in this world of corruption, full of problems, full of things which are the opposite of enlightenment: stupid, ignorant, vapid, anti-ethical, full of vice. I hope you can find some peace, and some succesful strategies for navigating, even if not a solution for all the problems you face.

Submitted May 14, 2020 at 08:54AM by 2bitmoment https://ift.tt/2LDZMwZ