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. Thanks for coming. I think probably my name is Taitetsu, and I trained at Great Thousand Monastery for 14 years. And I also have been doing some training, pretty extensive training, with a research teacher in Seattle named Genjo Marnello, who's in the Shaman or Roshi language. And he does entirely koan training that I've sat about in the 15th or 16th session with him. And before I started sitting session with him, my relationship to koans was pretty tenuous, or I was pretty intimidated by koans. I'd read them and find them interesting, but hard to digest or hard to connect with.

[01:05]

And I felt like they were a good practice, but maybe for somebody else. And then when I started doing Sesshin with Genjo, when he primarily did Koin, I was really forced to bite the bullet and start practicing with them formally. And after a number of years of practicing with them formally, my relationship to them changed. I became much more... appreciative of the teaching system in the colon. And so, of course, because I started out so maybe shy or intimidated by the colon, and I feel much more confident and clear about them now, there's been a few markers about that transition. And so I thought that's what I'd share with you, sort of some of the insights I've had along the way, some of the things that have helped me. mature and become more interested and even playful with the columns.

[02:07]

Alright, any questions so far? Great. So the first thing I want to mention is this idea of passing the moon. So, as you probably know, in the moon long column, which is traditionally the first set of columns you go through, The first koan is Joshu's moon. And this acts as a kind of threshold in our koan practice. And I want to say from my own experience that there really is such a thing as passing. And that there really is a kind of before and after in relationship to everything. One's life, one's spiritual practice, and certainly koans. Before and after what we would call breaking or passing. And in a way, 90% of our spiritual practice is about that, in a way. Another way to say that is if we haven't passed Mu, we shouldn't worry about anything else.

[03:12]

And if we haven't passed Mu, we shouldn't worry about passing Mu either. And I also want to say that I personally, my experience with Mu and my passing with Mu came before I'd ever been introduced to koan practice formally. It came through meditation, but not through any kind of regimented or directed meditation. It happened fairly spontaneously. And so we hear a lot of stories about people being pushed and having a big breakthrough due to the conditions. And my own experience was more like I found my own internal compass and followed it. And certainly conditions in my life had me under pressure. But I don't think it's a simple or institutionalizable experience. I don't think it's possible to institutionalize a breakthrough that we call passing through.

[04:16]

And yet Zen Buddhism tries valiantly and wholeheartedly to institutionalize that because it is such an important experience and life-changing and spiritual practice-affirming event. And one question I often struggle with is, is advanced Zen practice better left to people that have spontaneously passed what we call passed new or broken new? Or is it really worth the trouble of encouraging people? Because what happens, of course, is that as soon as you start encouraging people to pass new, then you have set up a standard. I have or haven't passed me. That's when I just said that. And that creates all kinds of problems, and it is essentially nonsense, and yet it's essential nonsense. And if what I'm saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'm sorry. I don't know the particular way to talk about this. Is it possible to have other brainwriters in columns about fascinating? Or is fascinating? That's kind of symbolic of you're ready to move.

[05:17]

I think it's possible to have... Yeah, I get your question. I think it's possible to have... like, insights into some of the points that the koans are pointed at. Like, for example, Hyakuja's Fox, the second koan, talks about karma, talks about cause and effect. I think it's very possible to have some insight or recognition or even understanding of cause and effect without having a past move. But I also think that, in my experience, working with koans, The perspective of mu is the ground that I work with the koans from. So if that ground is not familiar, or if that's not a territory that I have experience with, then it's very easy to work on koans in a what I would call shallow, or maybe kind of fruitless way.

[06:19]

Maybe not fruitless, I don't know. Maybe just less than ideal way. I think a good Zen teacher has the ability to challenge people where they need to be challenged. So, with that said, let me talk a little bit more about koans. I know that, you know, we could talk, we could spend a whole session talking about that, but we're going to move on now, unless there are more questions. Did I answer your question? I think so, yeah. It's just, I see that in formals in koan training, there's no structure, but it seems like, like you're saying, that structure was set up kind of as a way to guide people along this path, and I'm just curious about other alternatives. I know you mostly work on this path, but I just wondered if there's something special about that particular koan that was particularly useful or instructive, or if it was just, that could happen with any koan, it's just that they picked Mu,

[07:23]

the start of that sequence. OK. I better understand the question. I think it can happen with any koan. In fact, it's worth knowing that in some traditions in the Korean Zen school, people are given just one koan for their whole life. And it's not always Mu. The breakthrough, pass be Mu, is a fundamental breakthrough regarding who we think we are and how we experience the world. And all the koans ask you to break through what you currently, or maybe you might say the relative way of understanding. So yeah, so Mu doesn't have to be the first colon, and certainly other colonists can lead to that, and certainly lots of other things can lead to that, versus just colon work or even meditation. I'm sorry, I missed the first few seconds. You were working with a teacher. Right, yeah, I started sitting session with a Rinzai teacher in 2009. And I've been sitting force-ishing with him since then. Who's here?

[08:24]

Denja Barnella. Okay. And when did you pass the move? Well, I would say that I had my sort of move-passing experience before I even entered his entry. It was affirmed by him. What happened? What happened? It was a full move. I'm happy to answer that question. I'll just keep an eye out of time. I've been really unclear about what to do with my life. And I was experiencing a lot of suffering at the rental of, like, something's not right. Like, I have what I think I should have, but something's not right. Something was still bothering me about who I was in my existence or what I was supposed to do. But it was all very vague. And so I just felt like I was going through my life, going through the motions, doing what I was supposed to do. But, like, there had to be more than this. And then I started meditating, and I was able, sort of through the grace of karma, to have a very concentrated mind in my meditation.

[09:30]

And I would meditate, and I had read a little bit about Buddhism just enough to know that I should meditate, but not much more than that. And so I'd meditate, and I noticed as I was meditating that a fear would arise. And it usually was like a pretty mundane fear, like, how am I going to pay this bill, or what if somebody doesn't like me? It was a fairly, what I would call a shallow fear. And I noticed if I put my concentrated mind on the fear and held it there and waited, that the fear would spontaneously break apart. And I would see that what I was afraid of was made up of things that were not themselves frightening. So I would see that it was made of like a thought. And it was made of an emotion that went with that thought. And there was even a physical sensation. But if I looked at it, none of those things were frightening. And when I did that, the fear dissolved. And I was no longer afraid of that thing the same way. And that was remarkable, and it seemed like a good thing. Oh, that was good. That worked. And so I would do that. I would sit and I would meditate, and I would allow whatever fear arose to arise, and then I would look at it really clearly, find concentrated state, and just wait, just kind of hold it there.

[10:37]

I'm afraid of the future. I'm afraid of not having enough money. I'm afraid of getting sick. And I would hold it there, and I would wait, and eventually it would start to break apart, and then it would break completely apart. And then my relationship to that thing, that thought, that fear was different. So I kept doing that, and then really deep stuff started to arise. Like, what am I doing on this planet? Like, what is the purpose of my life? And then finally, you know, of course, well, who am I? Like, who is thinking all these thoughts? Who's doing this practice? Who is it that's aware? Who is it that's concentrating their mind? Who is sitting here? Who is hearing the breeze? And that it never manifested as a fear before, but when I was really quiet and calm, there was a fear of that. Like fear of really seeing that. And that was news to me. That was a new recognition. I was actually afraid of that question. And so I let that question sit in front of me. And the way I experienced that was through the sensations of my bottom touching the cushion. I was, you know, in a fair amount of pain.

[11:38]

And so I was sitting with this question, well, who is experiencing this pain? And I was looking really carefully at that experience of pain and the sense of who. But even more importantly, the fear of Knowing the answer. I don't know if this makes sense or not, but there was fear of knowing the answer. And that was remarkable. Why am I afraid of that? But I am, okay. And so in the experience of feeling my body touching the cushion and feeling the... So then I looked really carefully, where does my body touch the cushion? Like if I can identify as myself, there must be a place where I am and the world begins, right? There must be a point. So I looked really closely in that point. And in that looking really closely... in that moment, due to karmic circumstances that I've not been able to replicate, it all broke up, everything broke up, and all I was at first was the sensation of that contact point was suddenly like, it was impossible to stop where that ended.

[12:47]

So it was as if I was I was in contact with the whole universe, and we were kind of throbbing together, right? And then the next thing was that sense of me being in contact with the whole universe actually disappeared. And, like, the whole universe-ness just, like, infused me. And then it was just the whole universe just throbbing in existence in that moment. And there was no doubt, like, this was truth. This was real. Everything is... Robin, the universe. It sounds goofy when you talk about it. And then, well, and then the story goes back. But that was my experience. Okay. So, the koans, so, okay, so let's talk about that. Let's go from there. That experience, you might say, was an experience into the absolute reality. So, Before I had that experience, I was operating, like, I am a separate self, and I really am a separate self.

[13:49]

And, like, I really do stop here, and you really do start there, and there really is a floor, and there really is water, and there really are all these things. And, like, that's real. And that's what we call relative reality, right? Everything is relative to everything else. Things are smaller and bigger. And then my experience in that moment was what we call the absolute reality, where everything is just this one throbbing universe, and all the distinctions fit. I apologize if I'm hearing the same things you've heard a million times, but we're setting the ground. So koans challenge us to recognize our absolute reality and recognize our relative reality, and to function in the relative reality without losing sight of the absolute, or without losing contact with the absolute. And you might call that transcendent. You might call that transcending either distinction. We all know what it's like to be caught in the relative.

[14:52]

I'm certainly caught there a lot of the time. I'm running late, I'm upset, I really want something, I really am angry at somebody for something they say. And when I'm sort of stirred by it or when I believe it or when I'm caught by it, then I'm caught in the relative, right? I forget that it's all humphrobbing reality and that the distinctions are actually illusory. And it's also possible to get caught in the absolute, right? I've certainly done that too, and I've certainly talked to people that were caught in the absolute, where it's like nothing matters. It can spin off or get caught into a kind of nihilistic perspective. Nothing matters. It's all the same. Why do anything? Or there can be a, like, I definitely have this problem. Ego as big as the sky. Like the sense that I am the absolute, right? And I can get caught in that. Like, I got it. I got that there's no me. I got that. And kind of you don't. Like, not so much. So that's another place to get caught.

[15:54]

And so koans are trying to, like, challenge us on either side. Are you caught over here? Are you caught over here? So let's look at some examples of that. Okay, so in a lot of the koans, you hear a teacher asking the student to be able to stand on either side. And then the student will get scolded if they're stuck. Okay, so for example, Tozan King, this is case 15, Tozan 60 blows in the moon home town. Tozan came to study with Uman. How many people know this? Okay, just kidding. Tozan came to study with Uman. Uman asked, where are you from? So that's the teacher asking this question, where are you from? Now, obviously there's a relative answer to that question. We all know our own relative answer to that question.

[16:56]

There's also an absolute answer to that question. You could answer that question from the absolute answer. This might look like a lot of things. It might look like hitting the floor, shouting, making a circle. There's all kinds of ways of expressing an absolute answer to that question. So the student says, I'm from Sato. What's advancing? Toza replied. So then Unlan asks again, well, where were you during the summer? So now it's like round two. Well, I was at the monastery of Hozu, south of the lake. Then Uman asks again, when did you leave there? So, where, when, who, all of these have both absolute and relative answers. And Tozan keeps giving the relative answer. When did you leave there? Uman asked. On August 25th was Tozan's reply. And then Uman, I spare you 60 blows.

[18:00]

And as a commentator, it should be an explanation point, right? I spare you 60 blows! Get out of here. Right? And Tozan is shocked. Tozan is completely shocked. Right? He's shocked. And the colon continues. And he has a... He comes back the next day and he says, Yesterday you said you spared me 60 blows. Now, and sparing him 60 blows is like even worse than striking him. Right? It's like you're not even worth my time. Right? So it's like kind of the ultimate... It's a real deep cut. Now, this guy, you don't know here, but from Sato, it was very far away. So where Uman was and where Sato was, very far away. So this guy came from a long way. It's like, you know, I walked to Tassahara from, you know, Alaska. And so, you know, yeah, right. So Uman's like, all right, you put in a lot of work to get here, right?

[19:00]

Come on, man, show me something. Meet me. And yesterday you said, you spared me 60 blows. I beg to ask you, where was I at fault? And the colon continues. Oh, you rice bag, shouted Uman. What makes you wander about, now west of the river, now south of the lake? Toes on thereupon came to a mighty and like you won't experience. So, first point here is that the reading the koans, we have to recognize that the teacher is looking for that absolute and relative. If you're in the relative, great, can you move to the absolute? And the absolute often in Zen often looks poetic, and often is sophisticated, you might say, or there's often a spin to it. But it's important to kind of just get that basic unlocking tool. The next thing I want to say about, question?

[20:04]

No, a slim jim. A slim jim, right? It's like when they got the stone, the Rosetta stone, right? It's like you just need one thing sometimes. Another thing that this koan illustrates is how sometimes in koans, some of the most important points are barely mentioned. You have to be able to hear them and you have to be able to sort of tease them out. So let me give something away. I spare you 60 blows, Uman said. The next day, Tozan came to Uman and said, now, it just says the next day. All we hear the next day. And what's missing, what this coin intentionally leaves out is what happened between the time he got yelled at after walking all the way, And the next day, when he went to meet the master again, who had yelled at him, what, what, you know, that's not mentioned here at all. That was a very important part of this koan, sort of an essential part of this koan.

[21:08]

What was his experience between the time he got yelled at, insulted, tossed at, and the time that he was ready to face the master the next day? What was that night like? Right? And this is this guy's whole life. This is this guy's profession. It's his love. It's his whole life. And he probably doesn't have many options. And it's like his life is riding on this experience and on this teacher's approval and on all this Zen thing or Chan thing. And he gets thrown out. And in his first meeting, after just answering a couple questions, completely legitimately straight from the heart, you know, heart on my sleeve. So what was that night like? So the koan leaves that out, but it's very important. And koans often do this. And so part of the way that we unlock koan is we don't worry so much about just what's said, but we try to put ourselves in the experience of each individual and, like, play through the drama. And notice, like, what are the sort of signature or momentous events in the drama?

[22:11]

Because they might not be in the koan. That's point number two. All right. Could you tell us the book you read? Oh, this is the Mumonkan. So this is two Zen classics, which has got both the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff Record. And you can find lots of translations of the Mumonkan by different people with different commentary. My personal favorite is Zenke Shibayama, but this one is also wonderful. Okay, I'll start with your question. You're talking about unlocking a koan, and it seems like what you're talking about is like digging up the full case. But that seems to me like not actually unlocking yourself to the koan. It's like there's more that has to happen besides just getting the metaphor.

[23:14]

Right. I think a lot of times I hear people talk about koans, and it's like just this allegory, this metaphor. And it's like because, you know, if this means this, and this means this, and there you go, that's a coon. And that's like unlocking the coon, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of the coon. If that was all what coons were about, they would be a, you know, we might as well make a video game. Right? Seriously, like if that's all coons were about, we might as well just make a video game or make a movie, you know, coon the movie, and just, there it is. It's over, we can forget about it. Right, you're absolutely right. You're preempting me. What you're asking is later on in my talk, but I'll certainly address it now. It's fine. It's a good question. So hopefully, and this was my experience with Genji Hope, you train with a teacher who knows the koan himself intimately, and then who asks you to go through the koan yourself, and what you have to do is you have to embody each character and find your own personal relationship with that character's experience, and then demonstrate it to the teacher's satisfaction.

[24:17]

So there is definitely still... Like you can say what it kind of adds up to is like a conceptual understanding, your own body memory, and charades, right? And like being on the spot, like being really on the spot, like on stage, which is a very potent place to be. Take all those things together and bring them into the teacher and be dynamic, right? And like let your own experience inform you. So it's like playing a character as an actor, right? who has this dramatic background, who has this sort of motivation, right? Is it going to go through this piece, right? But you have to be so embodied in the experience that you can be dynamic. Because koans all come with testing questions, right? So not written down anywhere are testing questions, where the teacher then asks you about the koan. And some testing questions are like, like Genji will sometimes look in his book, like, what's the next testing question? Like, there's a kind of formula for the testing question. It's not always. The idea there being that if you're really embodied in a state of mind, then you're dynamic, and you can sort of answer questions from the absolute and from the relative, and you can play, right?

[25:22]

And when you can start being able to play in the colons, then they sort of take on a, like, they start to become translatable into your life. Because essentially what you're doing is saying, okay, I'm tapping into this wisdom, this insight, an insight that I have some relationship to, and I'm being asked to dynamically stand there and then I'm being tested, and I can fail a million times, and I often do, and I get wrung out, and there's that sense of, wrung out again. But then you sort of develop a comfort or a familiarity or a relationship inside and with a call-on until you're in a dialogue with a teacher that feels dynamic and where you feel like you can play, just like you're batting a ball back in front. And then they ring the bell into the next call-on. Now, does that mean that six months later you still have that dynamic great relationship with the koan? Of course not. Certainly, when I look at some of the koans I've passed, I'm like, is that what you need to do? But I also have the experience of reading the koan and starting to remember and starting to know how to find my way back there.

[26:28]

Like if I needed to give a talk on it or if I wanted to work with another student on it or something. It all boils down to is this relevant to our life in any meaningful way? I mean, you know, again, make a video game if you just want to explore something for the sake of exploring it. But this does, you know, Genzo talks about when you first have the moon break through, it's like opening your eyes. It's like before a moon, your eyes are closed, and you're feeling around the world, and you can feel all the different pieces. That's a chair, that's a cup, that's a floor. You open your eyes, and you see how they're all connected. You see how they're all existing in your visual field. And then he says, koans are like putting on a pair of glasses. So we can see, but now we can see more and more sharply. It's like the definitions end now. the angles on my corners get more and more defined. I think that's a really good metaphor. Sorry, as long as you're answering questions. You mentioned, okay, it's this being able to switch between the relative and the absolute.

[27:30]

I've heard a lot more like the absolute can't be described in any way, especially literary, but... okay, you could do some demonstration, come closer. So when you say, like, you be in the absolute and you be in the relative, I'm wondering what that's about. And I've also heard it... Let me answer that question first because I'll get lost. So that takes me to one of my other points, which is you've got to throw out all the rules. So that rule about you can't describe the absolute... You know, we have a lot of rules, especially on Zen, that sort of stand in our mind, like this is the way it is with that, just the way it is now, like in big posts. I've found that you actually have to throw those out. Like maybe you can describe the absolute. I don't know, let's try it, right? Like that attitude is really important. If you have anything in your mind, like one of the things I was going to get to here is about how there's so many things here to intimidate us.

[28:33]

So I'm going to segue, but I want to come back to your second question. I think I'm good for my second question. Okay, all right. So, just to be really clear, whenever we use words, we're dividing, we're segmenting, and the words themselves are, of course, not ever going to be a complete, absolute experience, right? I mean, in the sense that as soon as you start thinking, and as soon as you start understanding, then you're going to be the relative, right? Of course, that's true. But that also... you can be in the absolute state of mind and express yourself spontaneously and genuinely. And the person you're expressing yourself to can get that your state of mind is seeing the oneness of things. In your limited human capacity. In your limited human capacity, right? Like, at no point are you supposed to be, like, perfectly enlightened that you call us. At no point are you supposed to be this, like... This was a big hang-up for me.

[29:33]

Like, I felt like... If I was going to do columns, I had to get it all in order to even try to present something. But the opposite is true. It's like it's in our stumbling that the work is done, and the fun can start to happen. It can be really fun to stumble and laugh, to trip and fall and laugh and get up, trip and fall and laugh and get up and start to find, it's like trying to walk, like when you're a little kid on those big bouncy rooms with all the bouncing, you try to stand up and keep falling down. It's really fun, right? That's where coons can become useful. So I wanted to make a point about don't be intimidated by coons. I was so intimidated by coons. And I read, so I had to do case eight, Kechu the wheel maker, and he said, all right, next coon, and this was the next coon, and I read the, I read the, the coon's really short. Getan Osho said, Kechu, the first wheel maker, made a cart whose wheels had a hundred spokes. Now, suppose you took a cart and removed both the wheels and the axle, what would you have?

[30:38]

That's the whole column. So, there's a relative answer, there's an absolute answer, there's a transcendent answer, right? Relative answer might be, you'd have, let's see, if you took, so relative. If you took a cart and removed both the wheels and the axle, what would you have? I don't know, maybe some bits of wood? Or maybe you'd have some sweat from doing the work? I don't know. That's kind of a relative answer, right? Absolute answer, you'd have, it's nothing would change. Or you'd have nothing. That'd be an absolute answer. Well, what's the transcendence? What's the answer that can stand between those two poles and express, in a living way, a cart? So I read Muman's comic. This was Muman's comic. If anyone can directly master this topic, his eye will be like a shooting star, his spirit will be like a flash of lightning. Now, reading that comment really set me back. It was so intimidating. Because I thought I knew the answer. For me, the answer was just obvious. And I just went to, you know, I wanted to go to my teacher and present the answer.

[31:41]

And I can't tell you how hard my presentation was because I read this. If anyone can directly master this topic, master this topic, his eye will be like a shooting star, his spirit like a flash of lightning. I thought, well, my eye is not like a shooting star. I certainly don't experience it that way. And my spirit's eye. Who am I? I'm mastering this topic. I felt so intimidated. And I want to make my presentation and be like, yes, next poem. It's kind of an easy poem. And, you know, we shouldn't be intimidated. We shouldn't be intimidated by poems. There's something in Mu about how, you know, if you don't understand it, it would be nothing better than ghosts haunting weeds and grass. Okay. Like when I read it, I'm just like, oh man, like I'm just a ghost haunting a weed, right? Like that's how I feel. I feel so useless and weak and powerless. And I, you know, for better or for worse, if koans ask us to overcome our own sense of smallness and our own sort of self-intimidation crap and ask us to, I'll be right now, and ask us to be big and strong and confident and

[32:49]

And then to go ahead and trip and fall. Because even as big and strong as confident as we are, you can't just get them one after the other. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. It's impossible. You will trip and fall. And that happens over and over again. And you can do that with confidence and with playfulness. Confidence not born of being better than. Confidence just born of being in some kind of relationship with reality that you're not so intimidated by or that has some sort of larger than your own life view. That can bring a lot of confidence. It doesn't have to be deflated if you fall down, which I do over and over and over again. Okay. I was going to ask you how helpful the commentary, on the commentary, because sometimes I look at a colon, and it seems very, there's some sort of relationship that I have, and I look at Suedo's commentary, and I pull him on it, and I'm like, what is it? What's he saying? It's even worse than the Blue Cliff Record, because you've got like, All the different libraries of history in commentary.

[33:51]

So sometimes I just don't even look. This is not helpful. Yeah, me too. Once I've been passed on the Quran, I'll go back and look, and I'll see how much I get. And if there's stuff I don't get, I just note that. If there's a line in the commentary I don't get, I'll just note that. I have more to see. It feels like there's just, in the poetry and in the commentary, they're just kind of... taking this simple thing, kind of spinning something, sometimes even more elaborate. Yeah. And so it just, since I'm not in that culture, I don't get all the collusions. I just sometimes, you're just a little discouraging. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So on the one hand, don't be discouraged in the sense that don't imagine that you're supposed to know everything and have it all right. And don't let things like you'll be a weed or ghost hunting weeds, like stop you or intimidate you. Don't be defeated by it. At the same time, know if there's farther to go. Like, if you feel like you have some clarity about the common and you don't get this line in the commentary, like, note that.

[34:52]

Like, that's good to know. Like, where we're headed is towards greater and greater clarity and wisdom and, like, being able to see more clearly. So if there are places that are still cloudy, either because we don't get a particular Chinese metaphor of what they're playing here, or because we're actually still not seeing something about, you know, how deep the truth, we should know that. We should be okay. We should keep practicing. what do we do about metaphors? Yeah, so I was wondering about that. I thought about going through here and like kind of giving us some vocabulary, but I just, you know, that's a lot of work. Um, there are a lot of, you know, if you have a book of columns, you should always read the documents. Always. Because they're going to say things that might mean one thing, might mean the other, and you won't know based on like, uh, what was said and when it was said. Um, And then some footnotes are better than others, so you might find a koan commentator where the footnotes are good. And sometimes you just, like, there's definitely a koan language and a koan zeitgeist culture, and the only way I got there was just reading koans and hearing talks and talks and talks and talks on koans.

[36:09]

So you might go onto people's websites and find talks on koans that you like, in a person that you like. Because by hearing the talks, there's so many clues. And it really is just a matter of building up, like it's a language, building up all these different little understandings of vocabulary. I tried to codify it for you guys, but I just couldn't boil it down. Yeah. I have a question. So, what is the relationship intention between metaphors And it sounds like you're saying there's shared metaphorical language amongst the koans that are certain recurring metaphors. So what is the relationship amongst these metaphors? There's a relationship amongst the metaphors. Yeah, like what is the role of the metaphor? Oh, I see. Right. Well, the same that we have in English. I mean, it's the same thing. It's a way of using language to provide information

[37:11]

that also has a spin or a flavor. So if I say, it's a good English one. It's a good English metaphor. It's like a common, like something you'd say in normal English language, like, he threw in the towel. Okay, so we're talking about somebody doing common work, and I say, you know, he tried for a while, but then he threw in the towel. So that phrase, he threw in the towel, has a whole lot of information packed into it. You get this image of a boxer. You get this idea of somebody trying hard, getting beat up, and giving up. You get this idea somewhat of the person giving up in a sort of slightly shameful way, like he could have gone, but he didn't. He didn't get knocked out, but he actually just gave up. So throwing in the towel has a lot of information packed into it. And the same with the mouth. It's just a convenient way to pack a lot of information into a short phrase. And it sounds poetic, and Chinese love poetry. We do it every day. We do it all.

[38:11]

Oh, yeah, right. I mean, Zane's full of it. It's not just anything. Dogen's full of it. Do you need to throw towels away? Yes. Throw the towels. All right. So, first point, absolute relative. Second point, small details can have great importance. Third point, don't be intimidated. Fourth point, there are different kinds of openings. So this was... This was sort of shocking to me when I realized this. A lot of times you'll read, like we did on Tozan's 60 Blows, upon hearing that, he had a, and then they say he had a tremendous opening, or amazing opening. A mighty enlightenment experience, right? So there's that one, and then... Gute raises a finger. Do you guys know that, Colin?

[39:12]

Yes. Pretty well, not so much. Whenever Gute Osho was asked about Zen, he simply raised his finger. Once a visitor asked Gute, so, of course, you know, we hear that. He simply raises his finger. So, like, the question, of course, is how, right? If you think that Gute is just, like, going like this, right, like, that is his answer. Like, it's as in the act of raising a finger is some magical thing. Like, that's not Zen. Zen is in the dynamic presentation. What in the world was Gute doing in raising his finger that was actually satisfying people's Dharma questions? That one line is packed, packed, packed, packed with a huge question. How in the world, if you went up to your teacher and said, you know, I have this Dharma question, and he was able to raise his finger in such a way that you felt satisfied, what in the world would that look like? And then how do you demonstrate it? You put your finger on his finger. Right. We always hope we're this one. So once the visitor had asked Gute's boy attendant, what did your master teach?

[40:15]

The boy, too, raised his finger. Fearing of this, Gute cut off the boy's finger with a knife. The boy, screaming with pain, began to run away. Gute called to him, and when he turned around, Gute raised his finger. The boy suddenly became enlightened. I'm missing a digit. You just did it. You know, Genji likes to say in Zen, we lose an arm, a finger, and a cat. Price of Zen. When Gute was about to pass away, he said to his assembled monks, I obtained one finger Zen from Tenryu and used it all my life, but still did not exhaust it. When he had finished saying this, he entered into eternal life. So in this column, the boy suddenly became enlightened. Is that the same enlightenment as Tozan? Let me read you one more. And part of what I'm doing, just in case you didn't get this, is I'm just wanting to expose you all to koans. So part of why I'm reading them is just to, like, throw them out there. Okay.

[41:17]

Case 19. Nansen's ordinary mind is the way. Very important koan. Joshu asks Nansen, what is the Joshu, right? Master Joshu. The heart of Joshu. And he's, like, one of the top Zen masters of all time. And this was back before he was one of the top Zen masters of all time, but just a student. Joshu asked Nansen, what is the way? Ordinary mind is the way, replied Nansen. Shall I try to seek after it, Joshu asked. If you try for it, you will become separated from it, responded Nansen. How can I know the way unless I try for it, persisted Joshu. Nansen said, the way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing relative is delusion. Not knowing, in this case, ignorance, is confusion. When you have really reached the true way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space.

[42:18]

How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong? With these words, Joshu came to a sudden realization. And... I want to read Mumon's comment just to get this last part. Nonsense dissolved and melted away before Joshu's questions and could not offer a plausible explanation. Even though Joshu comes to a realization, he must delve into it for another 30 years before he can fully understand and teach it. So just a reality check here. This for me acts like a reality check. There are different kinds of openings, different kinds of realizations, different sizes and different depths and different colors and different kinds of openings. And so when we hear so-and-so have a realization, we shouldn't equate that with the Buddha sitting under the tree seeing a morning star or with our own experience or with anything else. We should recognize that this is somebody's individual opening and then we should sort of see if we can gauge by the koan and by our own relationship to the koan what it was like.

[43:27]

how deep it was, what it changed, what happened there. But we shouldn't just read opening or enlightenment experience as the same thing across the board. We should also recognize that however wise we think we are or we think somebody else is, and however deep we think our opening is or somebody else's is, it takes a long time to mature in the way or to mature as a spiritual teacher. Spiritual teachers have a lot of power and a lot of very easy for spiritual teachers to get confused or get tricked or get deluded by their own pedestal. So it takes a long time to be mature enough to teach the Dharma really wisely. All right. Next point is that the Zen masters were all just normal human beings. I wrote down a comment about the page. So how many people know Nansen's cat?

[44:35]

Nansen cuts the cat. Just a few. Okay. So, Nansen Osho saw monks of the eastern and western halls quarreling over a cat. He held up the cat and said, if you can give an answer, or in some translations, if you can speak a word of Zen, you will save the cat. If not, I will kill it. No one could answer, and Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening, Joshua returned, and Nansen told him about the incident. Joshua took off a sandal, placed it on his head, and walked out. If you had been there, you would have saved the cat, Nansen remarked. Now, this koan is one of the most challenging in Zen literature because, you know, the whole first precept, not killing thing, and then the children sat. But also for me, what was really challenging about working with this koan is getting these teachers off their pedestals. When I would try to work on this koan, I kept, like, putting these guys up on these really high pedestals, these enlightened Zen masters, and trying to, like, bring myself into their experience, and I kept getting going out over and over again.

[45:40]

I was not getting anywhere with this poem. But I was banging my head against it, and it wasn't until I realized that these are human beings that we're talking about. First and foremost, human beings that I could start to work with this poem and start to kind of get into it. So it's so easy to take a word like Joshua or Rinzai, one of these names, nonsense, We hear that name, and immediately we think, like, it's like, for me, it, like, rockets up to the top of my mind, sort of internal pedestal. And, like, this person is just always enlightened and always on, just perfect in all ways. And that's actually not how much we'll have to think of them. It's just a normal thing. And that's where we can start to engage. Okay. Next point is that... I don't know how many people like reading plays. I cannot stand reading plays. I went to see Shakespeare. I read the play, A Comedy of Errors, and I found it completely wrong, and I went to see it, and I was in stitches.

[46:41]

I could not get the lines that were written. I couldn't get them as a human being speaking. I couldn't get the emotion. I couldn't get the humor until I saw somebody doing it. Colons are a lot like that. Colons give you these lines, but they don't give you any clue as to what the person is feeling. like the koan I just read about the cat. How are people experiencing this? It's the question that does not answer about a koan. So in reading koans, it's really important to read the lines and recognize that all emotion has been scrubbed, and you have to supply a part of the work of going to the teacher at the festival of koans. Can you bring human emotion to it? And is that emotion accurate? Like, you know, is that emotion in alignment with this character, with this person in their experience? Is that practice of kind of the embodiment of the drama, is that part of the tradition of studying Kalanis, and what does that go back to?

[47:44]

It is in the tradition I've studied with, and what it goes back to, I think, the whole reason these were codified, the idea being that these people had these openings and very clear teaching moments about a particular sort of facet of the truth. And so to be able to go back and sort of present as them, to stand in their shoes, and to dynamically become them means that you're, at some level, at least integrating that insight. Yeah. Okay. And then, so along these lines, another point here is to not take any of the Zen characters as enlightened. Even in one koan, the characters can flip-flop between, like, the person who's got it and the person who doesn't. And my favorite example of this is in the Rinzai Roku. So the Rinzai Roku is the teachings of Zen Master Rinzai. So there's a pretty famous interchange.

[48:51]

Once during group work, Rinzai was holding the ground, seeing Obaku coming, he stopped and stood leaning on his hoe. Is this guy tired already? So listen to this dialogue as going back and forth between absolute and relative. Is this guy tired already? Said Obaku. I haven't even lifted my hoe yet. How could I be tired? Answered Rinzai. Now is that an absolute or relative or transcendent answer? Right? So... This is Rinzai's best. Rinzai has this beautiful way of finding the answer that both kind of stands right between the absolute and relative and still answers the question in a way that meets the question. And this is why Rinzai is considered a genius. I mean, this guy does things and says things that are remarkable. Obako hidden. Now, my next point here is that I was going to say, I'll say this now. There are lots of different kinds of hits in Rinzai's act. So when you hear that somebody... gets hit, especially in Rinzai Zen, does not mean that they've been disapproved of.

[49:56]

Sometimes it does, for sure, but not always. So there's at least four different kinds of hits. So, you know, just like slapping somebody on the back, right? You slap somebody on the back, there can be a lot of ways you slap somebody on the back, right? Like you're playing basketball with somebody and you're really pissed at them, you might slap them on the back a little bit harder than you need to to say, like, right? But you're still trying to, like, express that in some way that's allowed. Or you might slap somebody on the back because you really appreciate the shot they just made, and there's a real, like, you can feel that in that slap. I'm a basketball player, so this makes sense to me, but I'm guessing you can translate, right? Or you might slap somebody on the back because they made a mistake, and it might kind of sting the way you slap them, right? So there's a lot communicated in the way we touch people, and in Rinzai, they use these hits. So you shouldn't read hit as music. What about when your teacher breaks your leg? Right, right, right. Yeah. That's a good question.

[50:57]

What about it? What does that mean? What does that mean? So, right, so that koan, so there's a koan where a very famous master, Unlong, his teacher slams the door on his leg as he's leaving the room and breaks his leg. Like, that's a whole koan, right? That's a good question. And certainly you want to approach that first from the perspective of a human being that just had their leg broken or a human being that is willing to break another person's leg or to hit them really hard. What is that about? Where are you coming from? So rather than, it's easy to laugh, there's kind of the craziness of Zen or the craziness of Koen's office, it's easy to laugh it off. And in a way, a lot of it is kind of over the top. But there's also, like, if we put ourselves in that spot and we imagine doing that thing, we can feel real emotion. Like, Jesus, that's intense, right? That's really intense to do that. What's that? Like, can you get it that intensively with that life?

[52:01]

So, all right. So, this stuff is so great. I haven't even lifted my hill yet. How could I be tired? It answered Rinzai. Obotu hit him. Rinzai seized Obotu's stick, jabbed him with it, and knocked him down. Obaku called the duty monk, or the sort of the, maybe, Eno. Eno, help me up. Eno came running and helped him up. And then the Eno says to Obaku, venerable priest or teacher, how can you let this lunatic get away with such rudeness? And then Obaku getting up hits the duty monk. Same hit or different hit. Then he hit Rinza. So is the duty monk playing between the absolute and the relative, or is the duty monk stuck in the relative? Now this is where, so Rinzai up until now has played this beautifully, right? Rinzai does this wonderful presentation where he sees his teacher coming, he's out there hoeing, and then he just leans on his shoulder, he's really tired, right? That's a beautiful presentation, right? Like imagine the kind of principle it takes to do that, right?

[53:03]

Really like right in front of the teacher, he acts like he's all tired and lazy, right? The teacher comes over, gives him a relative question, what's the matter with you, tired? And he gives this wonderful answer, I haven't even lifted my hoe, he's been hoeing all day, he's covered with sweat, he's covered with dirt, I haven't even lifted my hoe, how can I do that? right beautiful playful dynamic right then they have this wonderful interchange where they knock each other over and they're both obviously like in obviously i i see them both being so playful like they're playing they're kind of wrestling with each other right and then the duty monk comes over and he's all like serious he sees his teacher with his monk and he's like on the ground and he's like what are you doing why did you let him say i get away with it i'm just like come on right and then rizai says everywhere else the dead are cremated but here i immediately bury them alive Now, how does that strike you? It strikes me as pretty arrogant. So here, Rinzai, after being so on, reveals his arrogant side, reveals his arrogant nature. It's easy to read this and think that it must be some lofty, enlightened phrase, but my head is arrogance.

[54:06]

And I think it's really important to recognize that nobody gets to stay in the way for very long. We all fall off. We all go right from being... as big as the sky to being egos. And the work is not to get ourselves locked in and stay there. The work is to recognize that we keep falling out, keep getting stuck, and to use whatever tool we can, Cohen being one of them, to knock ourselves out of work. So Rinzai could have used another kind of hit just then, as far as I'm concerned. Okay, so that's good. I think I've covered everything I wanted to say. Got five more minutes. Do you ever worry that you'll have a view of one of these, like Rinzai was being really arrogant, and your teacher will just disagree and say, no, he was just saying, you're killing me.

[55:12]

Right, right, right, of course. And then you wouldn't get credit. Why don't I pass you on that column? Get back over there. You know, sure, I worry about that. Of course I do. And when I have to give a talk in front of my teacher, I certainly feel like, oh, man, he's going to see right through me. And then I remember he's seen through me a thousand times. And then I remember the point is to be seen through. But I remember the point is to fail. This isn't about me coming here and being the wise guy in front of all you. If I can translate a little bit of something of this cause and help you, great. But really, the point of this is to evolve, to mature, to grow the hell up, to be a functional, awake human being in this world and do something good with our lives, to be a benefit, to save all beings. And that takes a lot of failure, as far as I can tell. It does not happen because of my success. So if I go up there and I say something with confidence and clarity to a bunch of people, then I get to feel all that, experience all that, and learn from it.

[56:13]

And that, for me, is what it's all about. What if you just disagree, though? You just assume your teacher is right? Well, I certainly appreciate that kind of challenge. I certainly appreciate you think it's this way, but I disagree. I mean, I'm not going to just be like, oh, we disagree. Well, why do you think? I want to meet that, right? And I think, frankly, with a really skilled and mature teacher, In those meetings, you don't know who's going to win. It's not ordained the teacher will win. I think often there are moments where the teacher, because what teacher is perfectly with you? What teacher has seen every angle of every column? Certainly, I've brought answers to Genjo that he's not seen before. Oh, that's great. Thanks. I've never seen that before. You've just given me something. So that dynamic relationship, I think, has to be there, where usually he's the host and I'm the guest. Sometimes I get to be the host with him. Sometimes, rarely, he's the guest.

[57:15]

But it should never be fixed. It should always be done. And I want to be as, if I'm gonna be knocked off of something that I think I'm clear about, I want to be knocked off so I know what I'm not clear about. I want to learn that. I don't want to just be kind of a, I don't want to just bow my head because I'm supposed to, right? But that's what's also my point now. Thank you. Sorry, another one. So would you say that the embodiment of the answer from the student before the teacher, that the answer has more to do with the way that that's embodied in front of the teacher than it does with, I don't know, what specifically is said? In a way, yes, and that. What is said has to make sense. It has to meet the moment.

[58:15]

It can't be gobbledygook. It's easy going to say gobbledygook, one arrow flinging into a parade or something silly like that. It's too easy to do that. So it has to meet the circumstance. But what the teacher, and I've sat in the teacher's seat enough to know, the confidence of the student is what really matters. Because if they're seeing something with confidence, then we get to meet there, and maybe what they're saying isn't about, there's a great story, it's a Sasaki Roshi story, but I'll tell it, of a guy who's working with Sasaki Roshi on a call-on, and he just can't pass the call-on, he can't pass the call-on, he gets so frustrated that he comes into Sasaki Roshi, and instead of answering his call-on in any way, he shouts at him, and he goes to punch him and stops, and he's like a karate master, and he stops, you know, the completely full-bodied shout, and stops his fist right in front of Sasaki's nose, and the story goes, Sasaki says, right answer, wrong call-on. How does it work the interpretation of these columns in the sense that the absolute seems to match perfectly with a certain hermeneutical background?

[59:25]

This is a word in English. Hermeneutics? Like fits perfectly? Yeah, the absolute seems to fit perfectly with a certain perspective that is taken in the coin. For example, from Western scholarship point of view, the absolute that you grasp at matches perfectly with the, say, mystical idea of the West. I think that you're a lot smarter than I am. I don't know. And maybe you should give a talk about the philosophy of Jackson. I don't know what you're talking about. No, it's OK. It's like the absolute, when you were talking about the absolute and the relative. I have the feeling that when you talk about the absolute, the absolute is the same relative. There is no problem. Yes. Right. And you might say that that's a transcendent perspective. Like a universal answer, when you talk about the absolute, a universal answer.

[60:30]

And then I'm concerned that this universal answer is see her to her perspective. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit, I'm not quite sure what you're asking and how to respond. Can I try to help you? Yeah. How do we know that these columns are actually translating into something that's real and not just translating into a language that we understand but that it doesn't actually fit with the experiences of the people that are with columns? Yeah. Right, so again, if this was just These books, again, we can make a video game out of it. If it's just in the language, it doesn't work because of the very problem. I don't think it's possible to do koans just by reading them because of exactly what you're talking about. You have to dynamically present to a teacher who has some relationship with the koan already and who can test your dynamic ability to be in that state of mind, in that particular prison state of mind, nonsense having cut the cat in half.

[61:32]

What's that state of mind? Joshua hearing about that, what's his state of mind? Present that, become that. Answer these questions from that perspective. So that forces you to, if you're only stuck at an idea, if you're only thinking about it, understanding an idea, you can't respond dynamically. I mean, I can't. And so the idea here is that by working with a teacher at a dynamic and personal level, you begin to integrate or assimilate the insight or the clarity. But if you just read them, I think you're right, it becomes philosophy at best. But then, in terms of feeling, trying to embody what's happening in the koan, if it was translated not saying cuts the cat, would that be... grips the cat in half, that he dissects the cat, that he pulverizes the cat.

[62:35]

You know what I mean? Like, if you use a different word, it seems like you're coming up with a different emotional context. No, absolutely, right? And there are different translations of the koans, and it's worth reading different ones. And usually when you're doing a koan, when you're doing koan with the teacher, they'll have a particular translation. And often I've had a teacher say, Kendra say, Okay, let's look at this word, but let's look at these other words, because these other words have more nuance, so we want to use other words. So we'll take a word and change it. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[63:36]

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