Practicing with Koans

Koans appear to take several forms; the kind that just lay out a principal, like impermanence, are fairly uncommon:

In the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha said to Ananda, “If you are able to transform things, this is precisely the same as the Tathagata.”

For this post, I'm focusing on Koans that you can repeat, until they are your own bones.

It's been said Koans are “little healing stories that follow us around the way a good dog would.” In Wumenguan 1, a monk asks Zhaozhou if a dog has Buddha nature, to which Zhaozhou replies, "No."

A few notes from the commentary:

The attainment of this mysterious illumination means cutting off the workings of the ordinary mind completely...You see everything with the same eye that [the Zen Masters] saw with, hear everything with the same ear...Then concentrate your whole body, with its three hundred and sixty bones and joints, and eighty four thousand hair-holes, into this Question; day and night, without ceasing, hold it before you...All the useless knowledge, all the wrong things you have learned up to the present,—throw them away!...As with a dumb man who has had a dream, you will know it yourself, and for yourself only.

Every pore "No" is the foundational gate of Zen.

I've seen a lot of people here get a lot of traction with Yunmen's "Every Day is a Good Day," or Ma's "Sun-Faced Buddha, Moon-Faced Buddha," even when they don't believe Koans have any practical use, in all their thousands of iterations.

Here's one to try. When you understand the basis of your experience, you'll understand why it works:

Zhaozhou said, "It lets asses cross, it lets horses cross."

Submitted March 16, 2022 at 12:32AM by surupamaerl2 https://ift.tt/qDCMvPS