When you cannot do anything - what can you?
Zen koan
*
“My feet are cold,” said one.
- Me too, me too, - said the legless.
kentucky folklore
*
Our life is a tool with which we experiment with truth.
*
When an ordinary person attains knowledge, he is a sage; when the sage reaches understanding, he is an ordinary person.
Zen proverb
*
Angels can fly because they perceive themselves very easily.
Chesterton
*
Empty handed, holding a hoe
Walking on a water buffalo.
A man crosses a bridge;
The bridge, not the river, flows.
hermit Mahasattva Fu
*
What color is the wind?
Zen koan
*
Studying the art of Japan, you see a person, of course, wise, philosophically inclined, judicious - who spends his time how? Studying the distance from the earth to the moon? No. Studying Bismarck's politics? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass entails every plant, then the seasons, the wide countryside, then the animals. After - a human figure. And so he goes through life, and life is too short to cover everything.
Vincent van gogh
*
The monk asked Master Qiu-wei (Ts "ui-wei Wu-hsueh, 840-901) about the meaning of Buddhism. Qiu-wei replied: "Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you." Some time later, the same monk approached Tsiu-wei with the words: “There is no one. Please answer me". Qiu-wei led him past the garden to the bamboo grove. The monk still did not understand, and Qiu-wei replied: "Here is a tall bamboo, but here is a low one!"
Zen parable
*
Labor is visual, obvious love. And if you can work without love, only with disgust, then it is better for you to leave your job, sit at the gate of the temple and beg for alms from those who work with joy.
Kahlil Gibran
*
Willow is green, flower is red.
Zen proverb
*
The flower is not red, the willow is not green.
Zen proverb
*
- I want to ask a question, - said the king Milinda [ Milinda - real-life Indo-Greek king Menander] to the venerable Nagasene. - Can you answer?
“Please ask your question,” Nagasena replied.
- I have already asked, - answered the king.
"I already answered him," Nagasena said.
- What was your answer? The king asked.
- What did you ask?
- I didn't ask anything.
- I didn't answer.
Who's on first Zen
*
Taking a high place to preach to the crowd, Fa-yen raised his hand and pointed to the bamboo curtains. The two monks got up and raised the curtains, twisting them the same way. “One succeeded, the other did not,” said Fa-yen.
Zen koan
*
Once a samurai asked the Zen master Hakuin where he would go after death.
Hakuin replied, "How do I know?"
The samurai exclaimed: “How from where? You are a Zen master! "
"Yes, but not dead," Hakuin replied.
The great Japanese master Hakuin wrote: “If you take one koan and study it continuously, your mind will die and your will will collapse. It is like a wide, bottomless abyss lying in front of you, where there is nothing to grasp and nowhere to step. You are face to face with death, and your chest seems to burn with fire. Then suddenly you and the koan become one, your mind and body are thrown away ... This phenomenon is known as looking into nature. "
*
“What is real meditation? It's all - coughing, swallowing, waving hands, movement, stillness, words, actions, evil and good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, - in one koan. "
Hakuin (1686-1769), Japanese thinker, painter and calligrapher, monk of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism
*
“Soon, the child’s clear gaze is clouded by ideas and opinions, prejudices and abstractions. A simple free creature solidifies, fettered by a burdensome armor for the ego. Only years later does our natural instinct tell us that a vital sense of mystery has been taken away from us. The sun sparkles through the pines, a moment of beauty and strange pain permeates the heart, like a memory of paradise. After this day ... we become seekers. "
Peter Matthiessen
*
Wealthy patrons invited Ikkyū to a great celebration. Ikkyu came dressed in beggarly rags. The owner, not recognizing him, ordered him to be expelled. Ikkyu returned home, dressed in an elegant purple brocade robe, and returned to the party. With great honor he was escorted to his rooms. Here he put his mantle on the pillows, with the words: "Since you recently banished me, I think you invited the mantle to the holiday." And left.
*
Crazy cloud
Ikkyū Sōjun (1394-1481), an eccentric genius revered for intelligence and discernment, is one of the favorite heroes of Japanese Zen. They say he was the son of a Japanese emperor and a maid of honor. Bright and lively, he loved to poke fun at the hypocrisy of the dull and corrupt society of the time. Later, Ikkyu found one of Zen's most uncompromising teachers. For years Ikkyu studied, subjecting himself to severe restrictions, and gained enlightenment when he was sailing a boat on Lake Biwa at night and heard the hoarse cry of a crow.
After the death of his teacher, Ikkyu spent 30 years in wanderings, living among the most diverse strata of society - nobles, merchants, prostitutes, writers, actors ... He loved women and sake, continuing to spit in the face of orthodoxy.
Ikkyu, who called himself Crazy Cloud, was a renowned painter, calligrapher, and poet.
His most famous Zen poems are:
Emptiness in form
When the dew drops
Gather on scarlet maple leaves
Take a look at the scarlet beads!
Form in the void
The tree is bare
All colors and smells are gone
But already on the bitch
Carefree spring!
Without a destination, I will never be lost.
Ikkyu
The stone buddha has earned all the bird droppings on it.
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind.
Ikkyu
*
One day a man turned to Ikkyu: "Master, please write a few maxims of the greatest wisdom."
Ikkyu took a paintbrush and wrote, "Attention."
"And it's all?"
Ikkyu wrote: “Attention. Attention".
"Well, I don’t know ... I don’t see much depth in what you wrote."
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times: “Attention. Attention. Attention."
Starting to get angry, the man demanded an explanation: "What does the word" attention "mean?"
And Ikkyu replied, "Attention means attention."
Zen story
*
Raindrops are knocking on the leaves, but these are not tears of grief; it is only the pain of the one who listens to them.
Zen proverb
*
Wonderful snowflakes, falling nowhere.
Zen proverb
*
The monk asked Zen master Haryo (Zen master X p. Haryo Kokan (Baling Haoqian): "What is the path?" “A man with open eyes falls into a well,” the Master replied.
Zen koan
Where do we come from? Who are we? Where we are going?
Gauguin
*
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Buddhist proverb
*
A good shooter misses the center of the target.
Zen proverb
*
In the house - live closer to the earth;
Keep your thoughts simple;
In a dispute - be generous and fair;
In government, don't try to control;
In work - do what you love;
In the family, be fully present in the present.
Classical Chinese text Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing, attributed to Lao Chi
*
Where people are
there will be flies and buddhas.
Issa
*
Underdeveloped people find joy in flashy flamboyance and novelty.
Those who are ready find joy in everyday life.
Zen proverb
*
When hungry, eat rice, when tired, close your eyes.
The fools will laugh at me, but the wise will understand what I mean.
Master Lin-Chi
*
The Spanish poet and monk of the Augustine Order, Luis Ponce de León, returned to the university after five years in prison on charges of the Inquisition, and continued his lecture with the words: "As we said yesterday ..."
*
We are more interested in the meaning of dreams than the essence of the things that we see around us when we are awake.
ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes
*
I have nothing to tell you, friends.
If you want to make sense
Stop chasing so many things.
*
Do you call my poems poetry?
This is not poetry.
But if you understand that these verses are not poetry,
You will see their poetry.
*
IN aboutah the brook in the low
Never shout to the tainted world: "Cleanse!"
But simple and natural
Show how to do it.
*
High in the mountains at night
I am sitting in meditation.
Human vanity never penetrates here:
Everything is calm and deserted
All the incense burners were consumed by the endless night.
My clothes have become a mantle of dew.
Unable to sleep, I wandered to the forest -
Suddenly over the highest mountain peak
The full moon appeared.
Ryōkan Taigu
*
Say one word with your mouth closed.
Zen proverb
*
The sage is not calm because they say it is good. He is calm, because many things are not capable of shaking his peace. When the water is calm, it reflects a person's beard and eyebrows. An experienced carpenter uses the water in the level for measurements. If the calm water is so clear, how much greater is the capacity of the spirit! The consciousness of a sage is a mirror in which heaven and earth are reflected, and all that exists.
Chuang-tzu
*
One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking along the river bank.
"What a delight to see fish happily frolicking in the water!" - exclaimed Chuang Tzu.
“You are not a fish. How do you know if the fish are happy or not? " - asked his companion.
“You are not me. How do you know that I don't know if the fish are happy? " - answered Chuang Tzu.
*
When the roof was leaking, the Zen teacher told two monks to bring something to collect water. One brought a keg, the other a basket. The first received a stern reprimand, the second earned praise.
Zen koan
*
On the evening of the third day, when we were swimming right through the herd of hippos at sunset, the words "Reverence for life" suddenly appeared in front of me ...
Albert Schweitzer
*
See the world in one grain of sand
And the whole space is in a forest blade
Fit infinity in the palm of your hand
And in a fleeting moment eternity
William Blake
*
Learn the rules well, and then forget them ...
Go to the pine forest if you want to learn about the pine tree,
Go to the bamboo grove if you want to learn about bamboo.
In doing this, get rid of subjective self-absorption ...
Poetry will arise by itself when you become one with the object.
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
*
When a fish swims, it swims and swims, because there is no end to the water.
When a bird flies, it flies and flies, because there is no end to heaven.
There was no fish that floated out of the water, or a bird that flew out of the sky.
When they need a little water or sky, they use only a small portion of the space;
when they need more, they use b aboutmore space.
So, they use all the water and the entire sky at every moment, and in any place they have complete freedom.
Dogen
Enlightenment is like the reflection of the moon on water. The moon doesn't get wet, the water doesn't worry. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in the smallest puddle. The whole moon and the whole sky are reflected in a dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen
Four and fifty years
I hung the sky with stars.
Now I break through the obstacle -
What a hail of fragments!
Dogen, poems before death
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Heavy snowfall disappears into the sea. What a quiet!
zen proverb
*
Knock the heavens and listen to the sound.
Zen proverb
*
What was your face before your mother and father were born?
Zen koan
*
Once Upon a Chinese Zen Master Chao Chu (Chao-chou Ts "ung-shen) fell on the snow and shouted: “Help me stand up! Help me get up! " The monk came up and lay down next to him. Chao-chu got up and left.
Zen koan
Translation - E. Kuzmina ©
I will try to explain the very concept of Zen in the most accessible way. First of all, this should be done for those who have not come across this concept. This is necessary so that a person, when faced with Zen for the first time, gets the correct idea of \u200b\u200bit. Most often, the term ZEN itself is used in the designation of the "Absolute" or "Higher reality" located "on the other side of words".
The well-known Ch'an (DZEN \u003d CHAN \u003d DKHYANA, resp. YAP, KIT, IND) says: "The word is slander, silence is a lie. Beyond silence and words there is a way out." This way out is ZEN - comprehension of the Absolute. Zen is also often referred to as the state of "cosmic experience" known as AWAKENING ("Satori" or "U") It should be remembered that Zen is not a sect or a religion. The practice of touching the latter reality is known in almost all religions as: returning to God, achieving Buddhahood, nirvana, etc.
In this work, 101 KOAN (GUN'AN) are collected - these are short stories, as a rule, containing some (often implicit) question or describing ENLIGHTENMENT (not to be confused with AWAKENING). The gun'anis themselves are such that it is IMPOSSIBLE to understand them and / or answer their question using simple LOGICAL reasoning. In the Zen sense (direction) Linji (Japanese Rinzai) koans served as the main means of achieving ENLIGHTENMENT. STUDYING the koans, you will see how the teacher's question gradually becomes a part of the student and, WITHOUT THINKING more over the koan, the student finds the answer in himself, in space, and elsewhere, because there is no longer a difference for him. This is hard enough to understand, but even harder, having got on the WAY, to stay on it.
First published in 1939 by Ryder & Co., London and David McKay & Co., Philadelphia, 101 Zen Stories is a book that recounts the knowledge and experience of Chinese and Japanese Zen teachers, spanning more than 5 centuries These stories were translated into English from a book titled "A Collection of Stones and Sand", written late in the 13th century by a Japanese Zen master Muju (meaning "Non-Resident"), as well as from the collection of stories of Zen monks taken from various books published in Japan in this century.
Zen can be called the inner art and design of the people of the East. Its roots were laid in China by Bodhidharma, who came to China from India in the 6th century. Subsequently, in the 12th century, Zen teachings penetrated into Japan. Zen was described as follows: "A special teaching without sacred texts, without words and letters, which teaches about the essence of the human mind, penetrating directly into its nature, and leads to enlightenment."
In China, Zen is known as Ch'an. Chan Zen teachers, instead of being followers of the Buddha, strove to be his friends and achieve the same relationship with the Universe (Universe, space), like Buddha or Jesus. Zen is not a sect, but an experience. The Zen custom of self-knowledge through meditation to realize the true nature of man, with its disregard for formalism, with its demand for self-discipline and simplicity of life, ultimately won the support of the nobility and ruling circles of Japan and deep respect from all layers of the philosophical life of the East.
The Zen spirit began to mean not only understanding the world. but also dedication to art and work, richness of content, openness to intuition, expression of innate beauty, elusive charm of imperfection. Zen has many meanings, but none of them are fully defined. If they were defined, it would not be Zen.
They say that if Zen is present in your life, there is no fear, doubt and passion, excessive feelings. Neither intolerance nor selfish desires disturb you. You humbly serve humanity, filling your stay in this world with love and kindness, and watch as you pass like a leaf falling from a tree. Serene, you enjoy life in happy tranquility. This is the soul of Zen, the vestments of which are thousands of temples in China and Japan, priests and monks.
Studying Zen - this flowering of human nature - is not easy at any age and for any civilization. Many teachers, real and false, have set out to help others to learn Zen. The truth of these stories is one of the countless and authentic experiences of Zen. Maybe the reader will be practicing Zen in his life today.
101 Zen Story
1.A cup of tea.
Nan-in, a Japanese Zen teacher who lived in the Meiji era (1868-1912), hosted a university professor who came to learn what Zen was. Nan-in invited him to tea. He poured the guest a cup to the top and continued pouring on.
The professor watched the cup overflow, and finally could not resist: "It's overflown. It won't come in anymore!"
Just like this cup, - said Nan-in, - you are full of your own opinions and reflections. How can I show you Zen if you haven't emptied your cup first? "
2. Finding a diamond on a muddy road.
Gudu was the teacher of the emperor of his time. Despite this, he often traveled alone in the guise of a wandering beggar. One day, as he was walking to Edo, the cultural and political center of the shogunate, he came to a small village called Takenaka. It was getting dark, it was raining heavily, the buzz was completely wet, his straw sandals fell apart. He noticed four or five pairs of sandals in the window of a house nearby and decided to buy a dry pair. The woman who brought him sandals, seeing that he was completely wet, invited him to spend the night in the house.
Gudo accepted the invitation and thanked her. He entered and recited the sutra in front of the family shrine. Then he introduced himself to the woman's mother and her children. Seeing that the whole family is depressed. Gudo asked what had happened. "My husband is a gambler and a drunkard," said the hostess. "As soon as he gets to the wine, he gets drunk and scandals. When he loses, he borrows money. Sometimes, when he is completely drunk, he does not come home at all. What can I do? what to do? " "I want to help you," said Gudo. "Here's some money for you. Buy me a bottle of good wine and something better to eat. You can leave after that. I will meditate in front of the shrine."
When my husband returned home around midnight, completely drunk, he yelled, "Hey, wife, I'm home! Anything to chew on?" "I have, - said Goodo, - On the way I was captured by the rain, and your wife was so kind that she invited me to spend the night here. To somehow repay for this, I bought wine and fish, so you can take them." The husband was delighted. He drank all the wine at once and lay down on the floor. Gudu sat down beside him in meditation. In the morning, when the man woke up, he forgot everything that happened at night.
“Who are you? Where are you from?” He asked Gudo, who was still sitting in meditation.
"I am Gudo from Kyoto, going to Edo," the Zen teacher replied.
The man became very ashamed. He began to vigorously apologize to the teacher of the emperor himself. Gudo smiled: "Everything in your life is changeable," he said. "Life is short. If you spend it in playing and drinking, you will not have time to achieve anything, and your family will also suffer because of this." The husband's consciousness seemed to have awakened from a dream.
"You're right," he admitted. "Will I ever be able to repay you for this amazing teaching? Let me show you off and carry your things a little."
"If you want-", agreed Gudo.
The two set off. After they had walked three miles, Gudo invited him to return. "Let me go another 5 miles" - the man began to ask Guda. They continued on their way. “You can come back now,” said Gudo.
“Another 10 miles,” the man replied. "Come back now," said Gudo when 10 miles had been covered.
“I will follow you all my life,” the man replied. Modern Japanese teachers have taken this story from the life of a famous Zen teacher, a follower of Gudu.
His name is Mu-nan: "The man who never returned."
H. Is that so?
Zen master Hakuin was known among his neighbors as a man living a blameless life. Next to him lived a beautiful girl whose parents owned a grocery store. Suddenly, the parents discovered that she was about to have a child. They were furious. The girl refused to name the child's father, but after long insistence she named Hakuin. In great anger, the parents came to the teacher. “Is that so?” Was all he said.
After the child was born, he was brought to Hakuin, By this time he had lost all respect of those around him, which did not bother him at all. He surrounded the child with care and warmth, took milk from the neighbors for the child and everything that he needed. A year later, the girl-mother still could not stand it and told her parents the truth: that the child's father was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The girl's father and mother immediately went to Hakuin, asked him for forgiveness, apologized to him for a long time and asked him to return the child. Hakuin willingly forgave them. Handing over the child, he said only: "Is it so?"
4. Obedience.
The conversations of the Zen teacher Bankey attracted not only Zen students, but also people of different sects and ranks. He never quoted the sutras and was not carried away by scholastic reasoning. His words went from his heart straight to the hearts of the listeners.
His large audience displeased the priest of the Nichiren sect, as the followers of the sect left him to hear about Zen. An egocentric Nithiren priest came to the temple intending to argue with Bankay.
"Hey Zen teacher!" He called. "Wait a minute. Anyone who respects you will obey your words, but I do not respect you. Can you make me obey?"
"Come to me and I will show you," said Bankei.
The priest began to majestically make his way through the crowd to the teacher. Bankei smiled. "Stand to my left." The priest obeyed. "No," said Bankei, "it will be more convenient for us to talk if you stand to my right. Come here." The priest walked with dignity to the right. "You see," said Bankei, "you obey me, and it seems to me that you are a delicate and gentle man. Now sit down and listen."
5. If you love, then love openly.
Twenty monks and one nun named Eshun were meditating with a Zen teacher. Eshun was very pretty, despite the fact that her head was cut and her clothes were very modest. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, insistently demanding a meeting in private.
Eshun didn't answer. The next day, the teacher taught the group, and when they were over, Eshun stood up. Addressing the person who wrote to her, she said, "If you really love me, come and hug me."
6. Not love is kindness.
There was a woman in China who helped one monk for over 20 years. She built him a small hut and fed him while he practiced meditation. Finally, she wanted to know how far he had progressed during this time. To determine this, she enlisted the help of a very sensual girl.
"Come and hug him," the woman said, "and then suddenly ask him: What now?" The girl invited the monk to her place and without much ado asked him what he intended to do. "An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter," the monk replied poetically. "There is not a drop of warmth."
The girl returned and conveyed the words of the monk to the woman. “And just think that I fed this man for 20 years!” The old woman exclaimed in anger. “He ignored your desires, did not express an understanding of your condition. Nobody forced him to respond to your passion, but he should at least show compassion! " She immediately went to the monk's hut and burned it.
I decided to return to the topic of Zen Buddhism, which I already mentioned on the pages of our magazine, let's say here. Zen philosophy is one of my favorites, because it is extremely simple and complex at the same time (it’s not easy to be simple at all), full of all sorts of paradoxes, interesting instructive stories and parables. The Zen tradition is one of the shortest and most direct paths to happiness and enlightenment. And on a short journey, you need to work hard, so Zen Buddhist monks should not only constantly be in, but also cultivate a vegetable garden, chop firewood, carry water, and run a household. But apart from meditation, Zen Buddhism is characterized by such an interesting type of spiritual practice as koans.
Koan is a task that a Zen master gives his students for reflection. Let's imagine that you are a Zen monk, then an enlightened master calls you up and says: "Show me, dear monk, how the wind should look without wind." You, of course, will try, show him something, but immediately get a bamboo stick in one place. Well, the master will send you to think about the problem. This task is the koan. Having received such a koan, a person will logically think how to find a logical solution - to show the wind without wind (this is just an example). And the trick is that there is no logical solution, and cannot be. (At all, at all) Any attempts to find such a solution will lead to new blows with a bamboo stick by a good Zen master in one place of a dull (or, on the contrary, too smart) monk.
There is a good story about how a wise enlightened Zen master named Mokurai gave a koan to his student monk Toyo. Koan was as follows: Mokurai asked Toyo to show him the clap of one palm. Well, Toyo began to come to Mokurai and show different things, passing them off as the clap of one palm (geisha music, sounds of dripping water, something else). But everything was not right, Mokurai sent the student to think over the clap of one palm over and over again. One day Toyo came to Mokurai and wanted to show him another version of what he thought would be that damned clap of one palm, and the kind Mokurai immediately punched him with his staff and sent him to think again.
- But you didn’t even listen to what I want to show! - Shouted Toyo.
- Yes, I just look at you and so I see that you have no idea what the clap of one palm is.
Finally, over time, Toyo began to come to Mokurai less and less, and finally, the time came when he completely stopped coming to him. In the end, Mokurai himself decided to visit his student Toyo, came to his room, and he was sitting happily in meditation. Well, Mokurai asks him:
- Well, my student, can you show what the clap of one palm looks like?
- Clap of one palm, but who needs it! - answered Toyo and then plunged into happy meditation.
- ABOUT! I see you finally understand - Mokurai rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
So, the koan does not have any logical solutions, and its goal is to go beyond the limits of its mind and logic. And going beyond the mind will lead to a small enlightenment, which in Buddhism is called "satori", and maybe to a great enlightenment - nirvana. A small nuance - going beyond the mind does not mean at all that the mind is lost or rejected, it just ceases to be a master, but becomes a servant of man (where he belongs). And also, before going beyond the limits of the mind, one must have it, otherwise it will not even be beyond what to go beyond. I suggest you, dear readers, to digest what I have written about koans here, and I will continue in the next part.
Taisen Deshimaru
Koan
Translation by Mikhail Serebryanny, taken from the site Antaiji-Temple of Peace
Get to the other side
Zen is always full of contradictions. He doesn't stop at the usual way of looking at things. He directs his gaze to his hidden face, to “another reality” that is not visible at first glance and which cannot be comprehended only through thinking. But Zen uses one rather characteristic method, the koan. The original meaning of this word is “law, government decree” (ko: “belonging to the government”, en: “law, rule”). That is, koan means a principle, an original guiding principle, an absolute, unchanging law of sentencing. Koan is a means of educating a student, a means that allows him to comprehend this absolute principle, to push his consciousness to open up to a new dimension. It may seem absurd to “common sense”, but with deep inner experience a person understands it and comprehends its all-pervading essence.
The practice of koan was developed especially by the Rinzai school. The Soto monks criticized the Rinzai koans, and vice versa. In fact, great masters have basically the same view of things, they have the same understanding and the same WAY.
The Soto school also does not exclude the use of koans. It sometimes happens that the master will give it in a group during or after zazen. Sometimes the student asks a question, and the master's answer is a koan. For example, to the question "Does the soul exist?" he might answer, "The soul is constantly changing." The answer becomes a koan because it makes the student think about it and find the answer himself.
Koan is not necessarily tied to a poetic painting. Every moment of everyday life appears to us as a koan, which we must resolve by coming up with a new solution each time and often have to think carefully. We must learn to “not back down and not wait.” Often, Soto masters use the everyday circumstances of each of us to continuously educate us, to help us learn the deep layers, which the intellect with its ordinary logic lacks in order to pass on the truth of Zen. This happens in a completely natural way. Instead of poetic pictures, my master often used pictures from ordinary life, which just because of this were very deep.
Don't kid yourself! The koan method requires the same training and the same concentration as the art of drawing a bow and shooting an arrow at the right time! Just as you need to renounce your will, being on the border with emptiness. Decisively and bravely dive into the abyss, face death in order to find a better life. Koan refers to the deep state of consciousness that is attained during zazen. There is no need to meditate on it (in the usual sense of the word) or to remember it with the help of memory. You need to let him penetrate the subconscious. When the time has come, he himself will come to the surface and suddenly carry the mind into a state of understanding that he could not achieve with the help of conscious actions. You cannot make an intellectual concept out of a koan, but you need to think with its body, with all cells, until it becomes satori consciousness. It can only be understood intuitively. At its core, a koan is a mind that is transmitted and carried by the mind (and xing den xing).
If you analyze the koan and try to explain it, then it becomes an object of consciousness. The same is true for books: No matter how valuable they are, they do not really convey the essence of wisdom, even if they are filled with the soul of Buddha or Jesus. There is an opportunity to find the essence of wisdom - with the help of concentration on a real, pure and calm emptiness, ku, in which all truth is.
From mind to mind
The essence of religions cannot be described. Although the texts are disseminated, but they are only the leaves of the trees, while it is necessary to reach its roots. The true essence can only be transmitted from mind to mind, from my soul to your souls, and Xing Deng Xing. In Europe, I used only this one kong-an for a long time. Others that I have quoted since that time I have heard from my master. They are usually very simple, but sometimes very poetic. Here are some of them, with a small commentary throwing a faint light on their deep meaning, a meaning that will pierce you and become your part, as one bouquet of flowers envelops all clothes with its scent.
The midday sun casts no shadow.
Zen cannot be understood with the intellect.
Cold, hot: You have to try it yourself.
Practice, try.
A curve cannot contain a straight line.
The pose is of great importance.
Deep spring, long river.
Through zazen, understanding becomes deeper and deeper.
Great wisdom as folly.
Great talkativeness is babbling.
You don't need to draw everyone's attention.
One single hand - no sound.
Combine contradictions.
Capture the self, follow people.
When you have renounced the “I”, the division ceases to exist.
Zen and tea are the same taste.
Calm, concentration.
Kyosaku dances in the spring wind.
Free education.
Bamboo exists above and below its internodes.
Zen is not a dead end.
The fast flow won't wash away the moon.
The cosmic order is always there.
Day after day is a good day.
Mind, always content, today.
The wind has died down, but the flowers are still falling.
Silence contains phenomena, illusions.
Pine light is neither modern nor old-fashioned.
Nature doesn't follow fashion.
Time is looking at me and I am looking at time.
In Japanese temples, time is beaten very accurately.
A shining light has no downside.
The “big” self is outside the shadow.
White clouds enclose blue mountains.
This is the essence of Zen.
With the help of SEATING - chop off.
Easier to understand than practice.
Prepare tea and leave again.
Musyotoku.
A man looks at a flower, a flower smiles.
Zen is beyond reason, objective and subjective.
The donkey looks at the well, the well looks at the donkey. Don't run away.
As in zazen, do not move, do not endure the influence of the environment, but be in harmony with it.
No one is on the zafu, there is no floor under the zafu.
Zazen.
White horse pierces the flowers of the reed.
I become you and you become me.
Buddha pervades me
I am pervading Buddha.
The self and the cosmic self become one.
I pervade others and others pervade me.
The man looks in the mirror, the mirror looks at the man.
The objective looks at the subjective.
In the middle of the last night there is a beautiful moon in the window.
Cosmic life comes to visit me and penetrates me during zazen.
When Choko drinks sake, Ryouko is drunk.
Mutual dependence between essence and phenomena.
Alone, in the center of space, in meditation.
It makes no sense to ask yourself where the center of the universe is. Where you SIT here and now: This is the center of the cosmos.
In a dojo in the mountains, I sit in meditation;
Everything is quiet. A silent night as I sit down in zazen. Deep in the mountains, night, small hermitage.
Dojo: pure, direct mind.
Difficulties shape and refine character.
Chewing thoroughly means you can't be hungry.
You use the juice of things without a trace.
Two mirrors illuminate each other.
From mind to mind.
Only hate chooses.
Separation, discrimination.
In the end, a thousand things are one whole.
Everything returns to one.
One silence, one thunder.
Diversity.
One was found, one was lost.
Law of life.
Luminous stone in hand.
You can discover everything yourself.
Poor house, right WAY.
Simple life, deep heart.
The eyes are horizontal, the nose is vertical.
The order of things.
Green meadows, red flowers.
Normal condition.
Alive in funeral machines
the dead accompany them.
The dead live, the living like the dead.
Here without fear, all life without fear.
Happy now, always happy. Life is one here and now after another.
Mount Oro is only a mountain.
Lake Sieki is only water.
A famous place is an ordinary place.
When you visit there once, you will understand.
True transcendental consciousness is an ordinary state.
A circle - a beautiful shining moon illuminates the Zen mind.
Circle: EVERYTHING.
There are no footprints on Mount Sokei.
After Hui-Neng passed on the essence of Zen to him, Master Konin fled to the mountains. True intelligence leaves no trace. We must renounce our intelligence.
Another meaning of this koan is as follows:
We must not show any sign of satori.
A real great man does not know that he is. In the end, you must become like a donkey: No footprints on Mount Sokei.
Free mind, free environment.
When your mind is free, then everything is free.
And now a few Zen sayings:
Fanning in winter.
Don't be concentrated in the here and now.
Anger becomes a devil, laughter is a Buddha.
Foundations are falling apart, rivers are drying up.
One grain of rice, one drop of sweat.
A day without work is a day without food.
Doctors no longer care about their health, monks are losing faith.
The essence of any action.
I learned one thing correctly - I understood everything correctly.
Long discussions will dissolve even gold.
(ko: an, Japanese calque whale. 公案, gong'an) - a short story, question, dialogue, usually without a logical background, often containing alogisms and paradoxes that are more intuitive.
Koan is a phenomenon specific to Zen Buddhism (especially the Rinzai school). The purpose of the koan is to give a certain psychological impulse to the student to be able to achieve enlightenment or to understand the essence of the teaching. A Christian parable can serve as a European analogue, but the koan should by no means be translated or understood in this way, since neither morality nor religion almost never relate to the essence of any particular koan.
An attempt to understand the koan logically leads to a contradiction. This contradiction plays an important role in comprehending one's true nature (Buddha nature).
A student who has received a koan from a master tries to solve the koan in all possible ways and "connects" more and more forces to solve a logically insoluble problem. As a result, when all five senses are "turned off", the student is at the stage, which in yoga is called dharana. In this state, the koan and the student are left alone (plus some mental wandering). If the student's mind is mature enough, then one day the wanderings of the mind subside and only the koan remains. At this moment, the koan and the disciple are one, the disciple experiences a glimpse of reality known as enlightenment or satori.
"By the decision of the koan", "by the answer to the koan" is the experience of satori, one of the primary and concomitant goals of most Zen Buddhist (Ch'an) practices. The value of satori as a result is determined by three main factors:
1. First, according to the provisions of Zen Buddhism, the experience of satori changes the psyche of the practitioner in such a way that meditative states become directly accessible (or more intuitively understood), the way to achieve which without such an experience, using traditional Buddhist practices (such as , the gradual accumulation of merit) can be very long. Whereas, even a single, short-term satori can serve as an instant impulse directly to stable samadhi ("every second Zen", nirvana), which is the ultimate goal of practicing any kind of Buddhism.
2. Secondly, even if, due to this particular experience of satori, the practitioner has not achieved complete and final enlightenment, each of these experiences increases his likelihood, since satori is a moment of samadhi and accumulates like any experience. Thus, a person becomes more and more predisposed to cognition of meditative states.
3. In addition, thirdly, this experience is something of a guiding sign and a reward: a sign that the practitioner is doing everything correctly, and rewards, since the moment of enlightenment is followed by euphoria, like a natural triggering of the so-called. "Reward system", which enhances its (experience) value for the psyche of the practitioner. That is why the decision of even one single koan can radically change the personality.
Obviously, in the properties listed above, there is some similarity with the experience of catharsis.
It should also be noted that due to the aforementioned concomitant euphoria, there is always a danger of delusion and the transformation of Zen practice into "getting" false satori, that is, satori - for the sake of euphoria, from which many masters warned their students. So the widespread stereotype "satori is the goal of Zen practice" is fundamentally wrong, although satori is indeed an attribute (calling card) of this teaching.
Closing phrase
If the master is satisfied with the way the student has solved the koan, then he can instruct the student to select for him a "closing phrase" (jakugo) - a quote from secular or spiritual literature that corresponds to the meaning of the koan.
Examples of koans
One hand clap
“You can hear the clap of two palms when they hit each other,” Mokurai said. "Now show me the clap of one hand."
Toyo bowed and went to his room to examine the problem.
From the window he heard geisha music. "Oh, I get it!" he exclaimed.
The next evening, when the teacher asked him to show one hand clap, Toyo started playing geisha music.
“No, no,” Mokurai said, “this will not work. This is not a clap of one hand. You didn't understand him at all. "
Thinking that the music would get in the way, Toyo went to a quieter place. He plunged into meditation again. "What can be the clap of one palm?" He heard water dripping.
I get it, Toyo thought.
The next time he faced the teacher, Toyo began to drip water.
"What is it? Mokurai asked. - This is the sound of dripping water, but not a hand clap. Try again".
It was in vain that Toyo meditated to hear the clap of one hand. He heard the sound of the wind, but that sound was also rejected. He heard the cry of an owl, but this sound was rejected.
More than ten times Toyo came to Mokurai with different sounds, everything was wrong.
For almost a year he pondered what could be a clap of one palm. Finally, little Toyo attained true meditation and transcended sound. "I could no longer collect them," he explained later, "so I achieved a soundless sound."
Toyo enlightened to the clap of one hand.
Here's another: collection of koans: http://fight.uazone.net/history/d0.html
Well, now: Lurkomorye: http://lurkmore.to/Zen !!!
"The monk came to the master to help him find the answer to one of the classic questions of Zen dialectics:" What is the meaning of the coming of Bodhidharma from the West? " The master invited the monk, before they begin to make a decision, to bow in a low respectful bow. The monk did not hesitate to follow the instruction and immediately received a sensitive kick from the master. This freed the monk from the indecision in which he was. Feeling the enlightening pendel of the mentor, he instantly achieved enlightenment and then told everyone: "Since Ma-tzu kicked me, I have not stopped laughing."
“Master Rinzai came with his disciples to Kyoto and stayed at a roadside shrine where there were several wooden statues of Buddha. It was autumn time, it was raining, everyone was soaked and chilled. Rinzai took one of the statues, split it and made a fire.
- Teacher! - one of the disciples began to shit with bricks, - you burned Buddha!
Rinzai did not answer and began digging through the ash.
- What are you looking for, teacher? - asked the students.
- Bones! he replied.
- What are the bones of the wooden statue? - the students were surprised.
- Oh, so they are not there? - Rinzai was surprised in response - then let's burn a couple more statues and get warm! "
Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Suzuki) - one of the close options
http://www.jhana.ru/chan/50-suzuki-part4
"One day a student asked Zen Master Un Moon:
- Is there anything that surpasses Buddha and all glorified teachers?
“Cake,” Un Moon replied.
Someone asked Zen Master Un Moon:
- What is Buddha?
"Dry shit on a stick," Un Moon replied. "
http://www.sunhome.ru/books/p.posypanie_buddy_peplom
"One day, many people gathered in the meditation hall. Sitting on a high platform, the Ch'an master Linji said," Behind the wall of red flesh lives the Beyond Master. All day the Master enters and exits through 6 doors. Got it? "
One monk stood up and asked, "Who is this Transcendent Master?"
Linji got up, ran off the steps, grabbed the monk and shouted, “Tell me! Tell me!!!" The monk hesitated. Linji threw it aside and said, "The Beyond Master is a bunch of shit."
Sprinkling ashes on Buddha (Song San) http://www.sunhome.ru/books/p.posypanie_buddy_peplom
“Once a monk came to Master Tokusan and, according to tradition, bowed before asking a question. Tokusan immediately hit him with a stick. The monk did not understand what was the matter:
- Hey, why did you hit me?
"There is no point in waiting for an asshole like you to talk," Tokusan replied.
The flower is silent. Zen Essays (Sibayama) http://book.ariom.ru/top/404-zen.html
"Master Linji said," If you meet Buddha, kill Buddha, if you meet a patriarch, kill a patriarch, if you meet a saint, kill a saint. "
“After spending some time in the United States, the future master Shengyan returned to Taiwan to see his two old masters. Shengyan said to his masters:
- I teach Ch'an in America. Okay?
- Ha! So you think you can teach Ch'an! So?
“I'm just kidding people. Do not worry
"Oh, okay then."
Tomorrow I'll write about Kodo Sawaki Roshi ^ ___ ^
