There’s a tradition of koan study to transform your heart and the way you move in the world. It’s something to keep you company, whatever you are doing. To begin anew, to see anew, is to discover joy and freedom. A koan is a little healing story, a conversation, an image, a fragment of a song. Who is more free, the person who travels through their life carrying their raft upon their head, or the person who can lay it down and walk on unencumbered? The lessons of joy and sorrow, contraction and vastness, imprisonment and freedom are learned in each moment we are willing to begin anew and be changed by those lessons. It is a great challenge, undertaken only one moment at a time. They are received, listened to, and embraced in a vastness of heart that invests no absolute truth in them. The concepts, images, assumptions, conclusions, and judgments we let them be. In each new beginning we learn the art of letting things be. The British meditation teacher Christina Feldman writes in The Buddhist Path to Simplicity,Ĭultivating the beginner’s mind involves a leap of faith, a willingness to dive deeply into “not knowing.” The alternative is to be chained to a past we know too well and to perpetuate history in each moment of our lives. The phenomenal world is the supported destructible inhabitants, sentient beings, within the destructible environment.
And when you look at how authoritative our habits are, and how much we go to sleep, and how much the world really needs somebody to have the audacity to say “no” or “stop” or “wake up” or “live differently,” it becomes very compelling. Addressing the one who had written to her, she said: “If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.” Buddhist Insight on New BeginningsĪll men have their fragilities and new beginnings. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun arose. One of them wrote her a love letter, insisting upon a private meeting.Įshun did not reply. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.Įshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Zen Koan: “If You Love, Love Openly” Parable Just do not have any doubts about the method or whether you have the “right stuff” to practice. It is doubtful whether anyone really achieves health that does not responsibly choose to be healthy.Ī person who has experienced oneness is different from a mundane person. It is not natural to tighten your stomach muscles or to straighten your back by protruding your chest. Deep in Poop: Reflections on a Zen Koan Jby James Ford 0 Comments This weekend I am deep into a Zen meditation retreat in Seattle and unable to make my regular contributions. These are the highest states that can be attained from the practice of worldly dharma. In fact, as you get into ever-deeper levels, you may be aware of the movement of your mind in the previous level, even if you are not aware of the movement at the present level.
#ZEN KOAN MEANING CODE#
Max Muller has said, “The Zen Buddhist moral code taken by it is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known.” This is why you should not look for something here you can take home with you. In respect to its social and moral code, the German philosopher, Prof. You come to a recede with the desire to transform yourself. There is a way of checking through the answers of the old Zen Masters. We are deeply enmeshed in a world where materialistic postulations dominate, and it is not so facile to contravene the momentum of that paradigm. " Four feet of chain link fencing.Nirvana is not a place, where one can expect facilities. Big surprise-he was Japanese!! Luckily it didn't get him into too much trouble this time.Īnd isn't that what it's all about in this world-luck? The enlightenment: Hakuin spoke only a few words of English. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?" The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back. She told her parents the truth - the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. He obtained milk from his neighbours and everything else he needed.Ī year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child.
"Is that so?" was all he would say.Īfter the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. In great anger the parent went to the master.
She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life.Ī beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him.
Man-or machine? This was the worst visit to Disneyland's animatronic Country Bear Jamboree I'd had yet. "Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat forever!" the man said brightly, extending his fishing pole towards me.
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