This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good afternoon. So I'm calling this Approaches to Koan Study and Practice. And I want to just actually start by just talking about what is a koan. Koan means public case. And this is actually a term that the Zen tradition in China drew from Chinese law, where public case is like an established precedent, like a judgment from the past that you use to make a judgment now. And for Zen, you could say these public cases cases, these koans, are the established precedence of awakening, either a realization of awakening or an expression, a manifestation of awakening.

[01:08]

And in this sense, you know, this is just, if someone cites something as a koan, it's a koan. So basically koans are whatever Zen people call koans. And most of them are fairly brief dialogues between a student and a teacher, but some of them are just the same. some are short, they can be kind of long and complicated and they can also, they could draw just a quote from a sutra or a few quotes and call it a koan treat it as a koan and work with it as a koan so actually they're and they're not necessarily like they're not necessarily riddles or questions they can just be a dialogue usually something pivotal happens for somebody involved Often there's some illumination for the student, but not always. Sometimes it seems like the student's kind of probing the master. Sometimes the master's examining the student.

[02:11]

Sometimes it's two teachers talking to each other. They particularly celebrate awakening as vital, free, and spontaneously expressed. And expressed in a way... very particular to each master, so the teachers have personalities in the koan collections. It's very rare that the teachers will use Buddhist terminology or explain things kind of clearly or directly. It's not that kind of discourse. The tradition was particularly interested in discourse where there's something unusual unconventional, startling about the expression. Probably the most common phrase in the Koen collections is at these words so-and-so wasn't awakened.

[03:15]

So Zen says that it's a tradition beyond words and letters, but then words are used so that They're not words that are trying to explain or convey meaning, but to kind of incite or open or unfold a realization that isn't in meaning, or isn't in language, but can happen in a linguistic environment. Koans become basically the essential literature of the tradition. They're like the sutras of Zen. And the great majority of Zen texts Collect koans, cite koans, talk about koans, one way or another. They're kind of what makes... They're kind of like essential. When Zen starts talking about itself, it usually picks up koans. And the collections of dialogues of teachers and so on, we have thousands of koans. Now, we're in Soto Zen.

[04:23]

here in Tassahara, and sometimes they say, well the Rinzai people do koans and Sotozen people don't. Dogen taught just sitting, Shikantaza. On one hand, it is true that Dogen criticizes koan practice, certainly approaches the koan practice, but he also kind of engages koans throughout all of his writings. He quotes over 500 koans in his various teachings, He comments on koans, he collects koans, he writes verses on koans, and he organizes whole essays around koans. So he was really engaged with koans because he was engaged with the Zen tradition. And so this idea that he didn't teach koans or that Soto Zen doesn't, it's actually fairly just a few centuries old, 200 years old, where the Soto Zen school in Japan was trying to kind of basically say, we're really not Rinzai. If they do koans, we don't do koans.

[05:24]

And they basically just kind of, you know, prevent a very kind of, you know, in a way a distorted view of what Dogen actually did, which is he didn't spend that much time talking about Shikantaza. He mentions it a few times. They spent a lot of time talking about koans, and his successors for hundreds of years spent a lot of time talking about koans, working on koans, and using koans in their practice. So then I want to talk about four approaches to koan study or practice. And so one is just to convey the teaching or convey the tradition. Two is this kind of what's called a headward approach. And this is kind of building up doubt towards a big breakthrough. Third are kind of literary approaches. And fourth is ritual performance. And so these are all present in... You can see all these in Soto Zen. and also Rinzai Zen and to some extent Korean Zen.

[06:32]

So basically the first one being conveying the tradition or say exposition of Dharma is koans were used to present Zen teachings. This is like the earliest examples we have of koans being used where basically recorded lectures on koans and they were It's not systematic. It's not formal. It's not aimed at the breakthrough. It's just talking about a koan. And koans, they're often short. They're often enigmatic or difficult, unusual in their expression. And in a way, the tradition kind of resists koan. glomming on to an orthodox interpretation of the stories. So it tends to be a lively tradition, where if one master says this is what it means, the next guy will just say, no.

[07:32]

He'll just turn it over. So it's in these kind of early layers of koan discourse, they're turning over these stories in new ways each time, and you can say in response to what's helpful in that situation. If the students were glomming onto one view of a story, they might turn it over completely. Just because that kind of getting stuck on an interpretation is not the point of the story. To raise a koan was basically to invoke the Zen tradition. And so this could happen in kind of a teaching context, but also in ritual. Koans were often invoked as a way to kind of say that, you know, this is a Zen ritual. and kind of empower it with the Zen tradition. Dogen's approach to the koans is basically in this spirit. He's very creative with the koans, and he does things with the koans that nobody in China ever did with the koans.

[08:34]

But it's very much in the tradition of the early commentaries in the koans. Actually, in the middle of Fukanza Zengi, there's a koan. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking, non-thinking? This is a dialogue that he's just taken away, the monk and the master, Yaoshan. But this is a koan. And this is the essential art of Zazan. A koan. And so this is kind of a, you could say this is always a dynamic and lively approach to koans. It tends to be creative. And partially this is also that, you know, again, awakening is not something that's described by the koans or captured in these words or explained, but is manifested through these words, and it can be manifested anew in how we work with these words now. So there's this constant overturning.

[09:39]

And partially this is also, you know, to let koans work on us, to let koans turn us, and then we also turn the koans. We bring new depth or new life to the koans when we work with them. It's a conversation. And basically the tradition, I think, invites us to continue this conversation. We're a part of this. This is how they'll live. And let's say this approach is not usually... pointed out as an approach. If you read about koans, this is not the first thing they'll talk about. But I like to point it out partially because it's kind of the first way that koans are used. It's probably the most pervasive across all the traditions of Zen. And then it's also basically the context or the basis for these other more formal approaches. So turning to the second approach, this head word approach, you can say this arises in the context of these informal exposition of Dharma, but then it's abandoning koans as a way to convey teachings.

[10:52]

It's associated with intense concentration on a phrase that's meant to lead to a big breakthrough, a big opening. It's particularly associated with Da Gui, a 12th century Rinzai Zen master. Dogen was very critical of Dahui. So that's part of when people say Dogen was critical of Koans. It's just that he was critical of this guy. Partially the reason he's so critical of Dahui is Dahui was very critical of the Saudong or the Soto lineage in China. So the Soto lineage tended to teach something like just not striving for a breakthrough, just resting in our original nature. And... Dahui teaches that basically it's quietistic and it's kind of a dead end. He says you have to take up this thing, this big striving, and have a big breakthrough.

[11:57]

And until then, any talk about enlightenment is just dreaming. And so part of the technique he developed was to rather than kind of work on a whole koan, to just work on this head word, this huatou in Chinese. This could be a critical phrase, punchline, or head word is kind of the most literal translation. So for the classic examples, like a monk asked Zhao Zhou, does a dog have Buddha nature or not? Zhao Zhou said, no, or mu. And so this exchange is the koan. And then the head word is just no, just Zhaozhou's answer, Mu. And so this is what you deeply probe into, this no. Basically it was given at that time in China that all beings had Buddha nature.

[13:02]

So Zhaozhou saying no was kind of an interesting thing to say. That was sort of unexpected. This is then a context for opening a doubt. What did he mean by that? But once you have this doubt arise, once you have some question, what did he really mean by that? That's basically the end of the doctrinal part of this situation. Once you adapt, you have a context just to create enough doubt that you then can drop all reasoning and discursive thought. So it's not that Mu is yes or no. There's no consideration of doctrinal theory. Well, maybe the dog is overcome by ignorance. There's no kind of logical probing. There's basically no reason. Any answer you come up with as a concept or as a feeling or as an idea

[14:09]

That's basically resolving the doubt. And that's not this practice. This practice is to have the doubt become deeper and deeper. In some sense, this might not be a very interesting question for you. Does a dog have Buddha nature or not? This might not be your most pressing concern. But this practice is to take this on, this external, maybe kind of not very interesting concern and basically turned it into a spiritual crisis for yourself where everything you are gets involved with the yearning to know the answer and not letting anything resolve that. Dahui was also famous for burning the Blue Curve Record. The Blue Curve Record was a collection of 100 koans and verses, and then Yuanwu, Daahui's teacher, his lectures on the koans and the verses.

[15:13]

And particularly revered at the time, and then also still highly revered. And he burned it. He wanted to destroy all copies, actually. And so this approach is kind of a reaction against a whole bunch of koans. This approach is more important to have a breakthrough with one koan than to study a thousand koans. The breakthrough is the major emphasis. It's kind of regarded as a very forceful approach. You could even say it's an unbalanced approach. You're not taking this up in a balanced way. Another saying of Davi is, little doubt, little awakening, big doubt, big awakening. In terms of how this is actually done in practice, like, one of the ways is just to repeat the head word over and over again. And so, you know, in meditation and in daily life, moo, moo, or no, no.

[16:19]

But other people have criticized this, basically saying it can be dead. And, you know, you actually have to have the question. So how do you actually have the doubt or the question or an actual yearning to know? So another way is just to basically have enough doubt that you get some sensation in your body and then just completely focus on the sensation of doubt. So usually there's kind of bringing up the question and then there's this sensation and then you work with this sensation until it gets very deep. And it's a sensation of doubt or yearning which is not pleasant. It's a painful type of meditation. I've just done one kind of seven-day intensive where all we did was this practice. And the teacher said this and it was true. We stopped in the seventh day and then this pain continued for three days. This lingering pain of this practice. Let's see.

[17:28]

One thing I wanted to mention is we have these traditional forms of meditation, shamatha and vipassana. So shamatha is a calming meditation where you give up discursive thinking, let go of thought, and you get calm and concentrated. And you can use breath as an object, for instance, or anything, any stable object. And it's very pleasant. It's a calm, peaceful, pleasant abiding. And then there's vipassana meditation where you take up a conceptual object. So you're using thinking to develop insight. And so usually... You know, in the traditional, like the Abhidharma, you cultivate these separately and then you bring them together. And one thing that's interesting is that this kind of, this headward approach doesn't really fit into these categories very well. It's not pleasant. It doesn't have a feeling of calm abiding. And then it's also, it could seem like it has a conceptual object, but actually when you really get into this, you're

[18:30]

Whenever a conceptual object arises, you set that aside. It's all about this doubt, this yearning to know. If there's a conceptual object, the meditation just stopped. I heard a teacher ask, what is the object in this meditation? And he said, well, you can't really say there is an object. You can't really say there isn't one. You can't really say there is one. And so it's an approach that actually frustrates this part of our mind. wants an object, needs an object to exist in a way, and this is part of its effectiveness. The deeper you get into this, you're kind of frustrating the dualistic scenario of self and other, or subject and object. And so basically, in this approach, in a way, all the columns could be used for this, or any column could be used for this, and But basically, once you have the doubt, they're all the same.

[19:31]

One danger of this approach is it's very forceful and extreme, and it can lead to destabilized mental states. It can also lead to disturbing psychophysical manifestations, like shaking or feeling paralyzed. And so usually contemporary teachers say, don't try to do this on your own. only do this with a teacher. Some say only do it in retreat, actually. Although Dahui, he initially was giving this to lay people. And then a kind of weakness in this approach, from my view, is this emphasis on a breakthrough. So breakthroughs, I think, you know, in Soto Zen, you know, we can say breakthroughs are important, but that the practice, the quality of our practice, the depth of our practice before, during and after a breakthrough, that's actually what's really important. And if that's not there, it seems like... I've heard Rinzai teachers say this.

[20:38]

You can have people that have had big glimpses, but they're not mature beings. They're not very skillful and they're actually not very developed, but they have had a big breakthrough. So it's not really... It can sort of present this breakthrough as like, well, that's going to take care of you completely. And I think that's a big weakness. This is today, it's practiced in some Rinzai vineages, and then very prominently in Korean Zen, the big emphasis in Korea. Dogen does criticize this, but then there's also this story in Dogen we have that, you know, he had this doubt. If all beings have Buddha nature, why do we need to practice? And that he was driven by this doubt. driven to meet various Japanese teachers, went to China, and eventually, you know, resolves it with Ru Jing. And this sort of sounds like some version of a headword practice, kind of the spirit of that practice of a doubt, you know, pushing forward and basically not being resolved about it until he actually had something that was profoundly fulfilling, like a breakthrough.

[21:50]

Not an answer to the question. Okay. And I think in the way we work with questions in our practice, they can be related to this. It can be good to have questions in our practice that are driving our practice, and that it's more interesting not to let them be answered, to let them get deeper and deeper. And this is actually, you can see beginner's mind as being this. Beginner's mind is not... getting the answer to something and then dragging it along with you for the rest of your life, but opening each moment to what is this practice. All right, so then literary approaches. So these have their, this is kind of like a formal systematic approach to Koan study that developed in Japan mostly. It has its roots in China,

[22:54]

And it's basically, you know, when the Chinese would collect common and coans, they did certain things that were kind of literary practices, writing a verse and also adding what are called capping phrases to each line of a coan. And so then, particularly in the kind of early Rinzai monastic system in Japan, they made this into a systematic approach. So there was a... you could say a curriculum or a set of koans, and the student had to go through each one, and they're required to develop, to basically show their understanding by adding a kind of phrase and by writing their own verse. This adding a phrase, eventually collect a whole kind of genre of Zen text, this collection of phrases that you would use to add onto koans. And they could be from Zen texts, but also just Chinese classics, secular texts.

[24:00]

And generally it's expected that a student would memorize thousands of these sayings and then apply them to koans. And I think this is actually potentially a really interesting practice. It's not just a restatement of the koan. It's meant to be kind of like, it's meant to set up a kind of contrast that complements the koan. and could be a way that you could, you know, open up new perspectives on the koan for yourself through this practice. Writing your own verse, the Japanese monks had to kind of learn the rules of Chinese poetry to do this. And so this was actually, in some ways, it was a highly kind of educated event. And to some extent, like Rinzai Zen at this point is... In Japanese culture, it has this role of just preserving Chinese culture. Not just Zen culture, but Chinese culture. Like rock gardens weren't kind of a Zen thing in China.

[25:01]

They were just rock gardens. But in Japan, that becomes the Zen thing. Because that's what the Rinzai people did. The curriculum, or a kind of sequence of koans, Basically, a major premise here is that usually there's an array of points that are happening in these koans. It's not just one point, one doubt. There's multiple points, and you're looking at them through multiple perspectives, under different metaphors, different contexts. In this kind of curriculum approach, colons are classified in various ways. Sometimes elementary and difficult. But I think actually what's most promising or interesting to me about this approach is that there's so many colons that somewhere you get stuck.

[26:06]

And that where you get stuck is where you can really see something. See something new that you weren't going to see some other way. As monks would be in various points in the curriculum with their teacher, this basically only happens in one-on-one meetings with the teacher. Dokusan. So, you know, if you're going through 500 koans, you know, it might be 500 or thousands of Dokusans. You know, this could be every week or every day, or during Sashin, four, five, six, seven times a day. There's actually a feeling that Dokusan might have started because of Japanese monks going to China and not knowing enough spoken Chinese to really keep up with the lectures and so on. And so meeting with the teacher individually, because they could kind of write stuff down and pass notes. They learned Chinese characters as part of their education in Japanese, but not how to say it. There were colon curriculums in Soto Zen until they had this kind of cleaning up phase and basically said, we don't do this anymore.

[27:16]

Typically, there's an initial koan, initiating koan, or sometimes called the first barrier. And Zhao Zhao's mu, his no, is a very common one. Another common one in today's Rinzai lineages is what is the sound of one hand? And then that's the kind of initial koan. And then after those koans, there's a whole bunch of checking questions. So you might have an initial pass, and then there's all these questions kind of follow-up questions to make sure and deepen and expand your understanding. Then there's often a set of miscellaneous koans, which are particular to each lineage. And these are kind of interesting, not usually drawn, or somewhat drawn from traditional Chinese koan collections, but also a number of ones that seem to have been created in the last few centuries. Then going through colon collections. There's 48 cases in the Gateless Barrier, 100 cases in the Blue Cliff Record, 280 cases in Entangling Vines, and so on.

[28:24]

Modern lineages often do the Five Ranks and the Ten Precepts as the conclusion of the approach. And so this is mainly in Japan. In Korea, they mainly emphasize the Headward approach. The prominent masters in Korea, they're often very critical of this approach in Japan, stemming from Hakuen, because they see it as conceptual proliferation. It's all these different points. There's only one point, you know, doubt. So these approaches sort of contradict each other. But you can't, you know, in the Rinzai lineage, they often do practice both. Like the first barrier is this, basically you take up almost like a headward approach, and then everything else is usually much more of this kind of... Either it could be going through a curriculum. The literary approach, I haven't heard of too many people trying this in the U.S.

[29:26]

I think in some ways it's so tied to Chinese literary practices and metaphors and so on that it doesn't seem like it transplants very well. So we'll see. But I haven't heard of this really happening. And so then the fourth approach I want to bring up is this koan practice, is ritual performance. And so this also seems to arise with the literary approach. And it's basically that in working with a koan, you would enact a response. So the literary approach emphasizes writing a verse or adding a phrase. Ritual performance involves enacting. And to some extent, this is sometimes seen as maybe a kind of a conciliatory approach that the other approach involves so much education and this ritual performance approach. Basically, you just need the koan. You don't need to memorize anything. You don't need to know any Chinese, actually.

[30:27]

You just need to be able to work with the koan directly and manifest a response in doksan. In this ritual performance approach, kohans are not necessarily something to study, but something to do. And this approach also is in terms of kohan studies, mainly happening in dokusan. And for this ritual performance, anyway, there's different approaches. Some people work on the kohan in meditation and then go to dokusan and have an engage in this enacting I've heard some teachers say they memorized the koan and they didn't think about it again until doksan basically doksan is where the work happens doksan is where the koan is living and when the enactment arises other teachers have told me when I'm doing this practice that well don't work on the koan but just in the middle of a period of zazen just drop it in there see what happens and then go on

[31:38]

So in terms of the first approach we talked about, exposition of dharma, there could be many, many different things you could do with a koan. It's very creative. This curriculum approaches tend towards basically an answer, kind of like a passing response. we know some of the answers in different lineages and they don't agree. So the traditions don't agree with themselves. So that's good. But there is some tendency towards a kind of a right answer. Partially how I've actually experienced this is that basically there's the right answer is not necessarily or the Passing answer is not necessarily a right answer, but it has something to teach you.

[32:44]

So, you know, it has a function for you to find this passing response. But that isn't something that you need to then grasp as, like, that's the interpretation of the koan, that's right. And people say something else, they've missed it. But then I think sometimes I feel like there can be a little bit of a feeling of, like, you know, a little bit of a limiting feeling in this approaching. We've got the answer. We know what koans mean. Other people, those sotos and people don't. You know, the headward approach, you could say, is really pushing towards a breakthrough. Either, you could say, an experience or a realization. And then this literary approach and this exposition of the dharma, conveying the teachings, the first and the third approaches, are basically unfolding teachings. about around and with co-arms. And both of these can kind of obscure this ritual performance, what's happening in ritual performance.

[33:51]

Because ritual performance is something you do. It's not just what you realize or feel or experience. And it's not just textual content. It's not just a way to convey some meaning through words, through actions and your voice. There's something else happening in actually doing something. One thing is, is it's embodied. So when you enact these koans and doksan, you're actually doing it with your body. And so this is different than just an experience or a meaning. It happens with our actual bodies and all the stuff that comes with having a body. You know, so this Hakuin's what is the sound of one hand or what is the sound of one hand clapping? There's, you know, a fairly famous calligraphy of Hakuin going like this. So I feel like it's okay to say this is the answer. So you do this thing with your body.

[34:56]

And this is different than saying something about this koan. And... And it's also different than just an experience. There could be experience with this, but this also is different. And you're performing this in front of your teacher as a manifestation of realization. And that's also maybe different than just an experience or just a teaching. How do you take it up? What does it mean for you to perform this? And what happens when you do this? You know, sincerely. The bodily dimension has its own kind of learning that can take place. There's its own kind of intelligence and practice and possibilities for transformation happen with bodily practice. And I think we know this from our practice here.

[35:59]

You know, this somatic realm has its own truths. Also, we can say that this performance is a... In a way, it's like a musical performance or a dance performance. So there can be a script or there can be notes on a page. And the performance is not just the script. It's not just the notes on the page. It's a living creation based on that. It has its own life. It can't be reduced to the script. And this is happening through our embodiment and through how we actually do it, how we actually perform it. And, you know, when people hear about this approach to Koan study, and also, you know, sometimes, in some traditions, you don't know what to do. But in some traditions, there's a little secret book that the students pass around telling you what to do.

[37:04]

So you do have a script. And so it can sound like this is just the, routine and habitual and imitative and formal and completely lacking in spontaneity and these koans they are so vital and creative and alive you know this is a horrible way to work with koans but the performance is still alive and the performance is a way for the koans to live with your life When you perform it, there's the performance and there's also your life. The performance is this enacting of awakening. And you're putting this enacting of awakening with your life as it is. And this is a transformative undertaking. This can change you. It can change how you're looking at your life and how you look at awakening.

[38:07]

And it's also, you know, this is an important part of how traditions live. You know, like there's teachings, there's experiences, but there's also what people see people doing. This is part of what attracts people or what brings people to Zen Center. It's like how someone moves. This is part of how they actually do manifest. So, you know, how... how it's done not just what's done but how it's done and this applies to our you know our ritual practice too like our you know our services every day you know it's just something we all create together let's see um There are weaknesses to this approach, and one is that it seems like some people kind of figure it out, almost like it's a game, and they can go through the system very quickly.

[39:24]

And so teachers, I think, from what I can tell, they just have to watch out for that, and then they have to work with those students in some other way after they've finished the system, because they might not be that mature. Again, it might not have been deeply transformative. Another thing I wanted to mention with this ritual performance of koans is so this working with curriculum is kind of one big way this happens in Zen. And then another thing we see is enacting a koan is part of a ceremony. And this is kind of a way to invoke Zen in a ceremony or in a ritual. And for instance, in the mountain seed ceremony, we enact a koan. We enact the first case of the Book of Serenity. Manjushri strikes the gavel, the world honored one has, the dharma, the king of dharma, is thus clearly observed, the dharma, the king of dharma, and then clunks the gavel, and then the abbot gets off the seat.

[40:30]

Or maybe they stay there for other questions, but we do actually enact this koan. In shuso ceremonies, I have a koan at the beginning. And in Japan, many shisō ceremonies, the whole thing is scripted, question and answer, you know, for 20, 30, 40 questions, whatever it is. And, you know, we don't have scripted shisō ceremonies here. And I think, I don't know if we can understand scripted ceremonies, but for me, this looking at them, looking at the whole ceremony as a ritual performance of the koan is a way to kind of start to appreciate there's a life to that. It's a different life than what we have, but it's not necessarily just trivial. It can have its own depth. And, you know, I think as a Shuso, you might be, and as a questioner, like, well, what am I going to say? This is this question, like, what you're bringing to this ceremony. With a scripted one, you don't have that question. But you have this other question of, like, well, how, it's still a question of how you're going to show up.

[41:36]

And, you know, and manifest. also sometimes some of the ways that Dogen talks about Zazen is a ritual performance of awakening so when we sit upright we're doing what the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree we're doing what he did when he woke up and sitting is not a it's not a way to get that it's an expression of it it's a performance of it in some of Dogen's teachings we can see this And so I feel like you can see this in terms of this context of ritual performance. You have this enactment of awakening, meeting our life, and that's what we're doing in our sitting. It's a kind of a conversation. So just again, we have these four approaches.

[42:41]

I brought up so ongoing creative working with koans in terms of like teaching the Dharma a headward approach and its cultivation of doubt a literary approach that emphasizes Chinese learning and this ritual performance with embodied expression and these four can support each other you know and so again like you know, it'd be very common that basically almost any tradition of Zen would have the first type as part of public lectures. Um... The kind of literary performance approaches are mainly in Dokusan. Uh... The headword approach, and, you know, in some Rinzai lineages, that's kind of like you start with Mu, and in a way you always do Mu. You might go through all these hundreds of other koans in the curriculum, but when you sit, you're always sitting with Mu. Um... And I feel like partially why we're seeing koans used in such different ways is, again, because they are our Zen sutras.

[43:51]

They're our Zen literature. They're our Zen teachings. They're the main thing we have to work with. And so, you know, if you want to create a new Zen practice, koans are a good place to start. Also, you know, the... Just to mention that the Tang Dynasty stories are the main source material for the koan collections. But then we do have koans from later periods in China. We have koans from Korea and Japan. And now we have people creating little koans with sayings of teachers in America. So this is also an ongoing process. If you have enough authority, you can call something a koan. and kind of the last thing I wanted to mention also is a genjo koan so genjo means like manifest or realized and then koan which is you know it's a public case or you know just let's leave it as koan so one way this is heard is like what's manifesting now is a koan that's our koan or you can also hear it as the koan is manifest or the koan is realized and that's sort of like

[45:11]

You don't need to look past this moment. But still, how do we engage this moment? So the manifest koan, the koan that is manifesting right now, the koan of our life. And I feel like it's sort of dynamic to take these other approaches to koan and use those as ways to reflect on what is it to take up the koan of our daily life. There's also, it's very common in the Rinzai lineage, also to kind of adapt koans to daily life. So a check-in question for Mu koan is like, what is Mu when you're arguing with your partner? Or what is Buddha when you're stuck in traffic? So these are ways to, you know, just working with the koans, it's meant to actually help us, you know, encounter our daily lives. in kind of the deepest way we can, the most alive practice way we can.

[46:15]

All right, we have about 10 minutes. Questions or comments? Would you give us some synonyms for doubt, for the word doubt in this context? Some of the ones I've heard are questioning. wanting to know, yearning for the answer. What was the question? Oh, synonyms for doubt. I'm curious about, you know, we're tagging off to that, like, so there's a synonym for doubt, and I'm curious if just doing that practice, like, you know, having absolutely no interest in move whatsoever, like in just having this intense craving for awakening, are those, are those synonymous? Or is, is there a difference in quality between like craving for breakthroughs and trying to really, to bring something about versus, you know, having a question seems a little bit more, I don't know that there's quality there.

[47:29]

You know, I think, I think they, I think they don't want it to be exactly craving for a breakthrough, but in a way it's sort of, it, one way of talking about it, it's like a really diluted approach. That's the way sometimes they say it. This is like a totally deluded thing to do. You don't have to crave and yearn to be awakened because it's your original nature. But we're going to do it as a kind of tool to really build up our delusion around this one thing, not let it resolve until it breaks through. But they talk about it that way too. If breakthrough in this sense isn't about finding and there's no answer, but cultivating doubt, How is a breakthrough different than the state of questioning? Well, the breakthrough is a kind of... It is a resolution of the doubt in a way, and kind of all doubt. So it's not just more doubt. The breakthrough is kind of qualitatively different. But you would want to... You would need to kind of work with a teacher who...

[48:37]

been through this to be able to discern when you've had a genuine breakthrough as opposed to something that could look like a breakthrough but that would be part of how you work with a teacher is like talking about what's going on and if you feel like you've had a breakthrough and there's also I would also mention some people some teachers feel like you have one breakthrough and that's it and then basically you can just do shikantaza from then on Like, you know that you're awakened. And you can just rest in that. You don't need to get a deeper one. If you need to get a deeper one, then the first one wasn't the real breakthrough. But then other people in a lot of spiritual biographies have many, many breakthroughs. And so, like, you have a breakthrough with this practice. They say, usually you can't cultivate a doubt for about two, three weeks. But then, eventually, the breakthrough wears off enough that you can get it rolling again. And they just... keep on going.

[49:38]

And like, you know, Hawkwind, they say you have like 17 breakthroughs or something. Charlie, a personal question. What has been your practice with these four different approaches? What's been your training and practice? Well, with the head work, just this one seven-day intensive, but it was all we did. And then with the kind of ritual performance, I've been doing colon study since I left. So maybe seven or eight years. and kind of still engage with that and enjoy it quite a bit. And I feel like it's basically all the same stuff I heard here, but just a different way to let it touch you and touch it. And so it just lets the tradition work on you in a different way. And how did you find a teacher? Or did you find a teacher in a different tradition who then helped you and guides you? Yeah, I just kind of looked up the nearest guy and... and we moved to Boston and James Ford was there and he's just kind of fairly well-known teacher in this tradition and so I started with him and then we decided to move this basketball and I didn't know this but like three blocks from where we lived was another was a Dharma brother of James and this curriculum approaches like if it's the same lineage and the teacher and you know they did exactly the same thing so I picked off exactly where I left off with this new teacher in the basketball where I left off with James you know and so that was yeah

[51:05]

And I can actually, they're okay with me going back and forth, actually, as long as we just, Daniel's kind of like my main teacher now, so I kind of talk with him through, if I pass a bunch of koans in a position or something, we'll talk about it. And is he, what tradition is it? This is Diamond Sangha, from Robert Akin. And then this is, Diamond Sangha is sort of interesting, it's basically a 20th century tradition. school in Japan called Sambo Kyodan, Three Treasures Organization and they're kind of combining Soto and Rinzai so they created and somewhat altered curriculum because elements of the old curriculum from Hakuin's lineage but then they incorporated some more Soto's and Koan collections like that. Kazon has a Koan collection, Transmission of Light, so there's another Soto person with Koans and Book of Serenity, a Chinese collection, kind of emphasizing Soto. You told there are four ways to practice with koans.

[52:14]

As I understand there, literature and performance, and what are others? Oh, the head word? The head word, giving rise to doubt. And then the first one is basically unsystematic, you know, conveying, working with the teachings. your creative exposition of the Dharma through koans. What's the curriculum you're working here? The curriculum in the Diamond Sangha is, well, I think the first koan can vary, I think, from person to person, but like either Jaujo's, there's a dog of Buddha nature, Jaujo's moo, what is the sound of one hand, or who hears, is the first koan. Then a bunch of miscellaneous koans, There's a book called Flowing Bridge, which talks about some of the miscellaneous, the lineage of miscellaneous koans. Do you want to check those out? But they're kind of, I mean, they're kind of, they're, I mean, one that comes to mind is like Count the Stars, Stop the Sound of the Distant Bell.

[53:17]

They're kind of, they're kind of, they're not really from, they're not from the Chinese Zen masters, there are other things. Then after the miscellaneous koans, the Gateless Barrier, 48 cases, Bluqv Record, 100 cases, Book of Serenity, 100 cases. transmission of light, I think it's the five ranks, and then the precepts, ten precepts, as koans. Can you give an example of how you work with koans in your daily life, one you might work with? Well, I feel like when I'm sitting, I actually do engage as a koan of, like, you know, Engaging this as an expression of awakening, and then how is my life now engaging with this expression of awakening? How do I engage that? I talked about a koan last time I was here. Why I call it a koan?

[54:17]

Maybe I shouldn't, but the saying of Suzuki Roshi that without attachment you cannot love anyone, but still you need to love someone. What will be your love? I work with that as a koan. when I'm studying koans with Danielle I memorize a koan and practice with it and that's always changing and sometimes I'll find myself drawn to a koan for a while working with it and filling it up in a new way and then just move on so that just changes from time to time usually traditional koans This might be a whole other college course, but what can you say about Dogen's way of working with koans? Well... He often turns them upside down.

[55:21]

One kind of radical thing he does that you don't see very much, I think, before him is basically everybody is totally awakened, and everything they do is a total manifestation of enlightenment. It's kind of an odd way to read up some of the stories that he reads. It's not usually there's like somebody who's deluded, and there's an awakened master, and then the student might get awakened at the end. And he doesn't read it like that. And part of how he does that then is also he does something you don't see very much in China, but you see earlier in Japan, is misreading the grammar, intentionally misreading, totally mangling Chinese grammar to have it come out to be something quite different from what the original said. But for instance, like, you know, I mean, like, what is the, uh, what is it, uh, wait, you know, he didn't do this with what is the sound of one hand, but, you know, what is the sound of one hand, period. You know, so the what is the sound of one hand. This is the kind of things he would do that are kind of, you know, kind of unusual and, you know, it's creative and fun and part of this tradition of, like, you know, you can do new things with koans.

[56:28]

If I go one more minute. You mentioned something about abandoning coons. I couldn't. That was a coon for me. Oh, I don't know. I don't remember saying that. Okay. Maybe I misunderstood that. Well, the headward approach abandons coons as kind of a matrix for coons. conveying teachings. It's all about doubt. So as an approach, they're not interested in talking to you about what's the optional context for this question. Does a dog have Buddha nature or not? There's a whole history behind that question. It goes back to India, when there was no teaching of Buddha nature, then there was, but not everybody had it, then everybody has it. Then Buddhism goes to China. Everybody has it for sure. You know, there's a whole set of developments there that, you know, that's part of that question.

[57:37]

And they had some... When the monks would ask these questions, they had some consciousness of that. For them, that was part of the context. But then, as an approach, this is like, you know, don't get involved in all those teachings. You're just going to... Basically, you just want to have like... this, I guess, spiritual crisis or just like complete yearning or profound doubt. In a way, this is also like you generate this profound doubt and then Zhao Zhou's answer has this function. That's where it can live in the way that you can see what his mind was. That's very interesting because in the library I came across a translation or a translation interpretation of the no as meaning don't go there it's all right but they would they would they would you know there's like you know well forget about it now you know you I mean unless you see it as a doubt instruction you could see it as an instruction for doubt but I found it totally good

[58:49]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

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