409. ZEN REMARKS

409. The account of Bodhidharma's audience with the Chinese emperor in 520 C.E. clearly illustrates how the teaching of the Dhyana master from India differs from that of the Buddhism that had preceded him to China by several hundred years. 'What are my merits?' 'None whatever!' 'What is the highest teaching?' 'Vast emptiness, nothing sacred.' 'Who are you?' 'I don't know.' To question the historicity of Bodhidharma's encounter with the emperor is to miss the point of this story by a thousand miles.

408. ZEN REMARKS

408.'At these words the monk gained insight.' And yet we are so often told that the Way is beyond words. Here we need to distinguish between live words and dead words. But how do we distinguish?

407. ZEN REMARKS

 407. At Bodhizendo, koans are presented in English. So practitioners work with koans that have been translated from Chinese to Japanese to Enghish. And translations, being what they are, tend to differ. Take, for example, the koan 'Nansen kills a cat'. In one version it says that he found his monks quarreling over a cat. Other versions have them debating, disputing, arguing. Does it make any difference to our entry into this koan if we see the monks quarreling or arguing or debating? 

406. ZEN REMARKS

 406. MASTER GEN-UN-KEN ( DARK CLOUD ) 

Head and shoulders it stands 

-- Mount Perumalmalai --

above the hills and mountains 

that cluster at its feet. 

Atop this mountain there rests 

-- in solemn stillness --

a Dark Cloud that embraces 

all who would climb its peak. 

Who knows whence it comes 

-- or whither it blows --

the Wind that shapes and moves 

this Dark ( Perumalmalai ) Cloud? 

(For AMA Samy's 85th birthday)

405. ZEN REMARKS

 405. When directed in a koan to 'put out the fire', I must ask myself what does 'put out' mean, that is, how is it used in the grammar of this language game. And again, mind the gap.

404. ZEN REMARKS

 404. Does the Master demand the impossible when he tells me 'Put out that fire a thousand miles away!' Not if I am mindful of the nature of 'the gap'.

403. ZEN REMARKS

 403. The Zen novice is directed to go straight on a narrow mountain path with ninety-nine curves. Notice that the narrow winding path is a mountain path. Might this be significant? 

402. ZEN REMARKS

 402. Koan: 'Inorder to be a worthy Zen student I must go straight on a narrow mountain path with ninety-nine curves'. Like with so many Zen koans this one demands that the student do the  (seemingly) impossible. The central point of the koan would have the student 'go straight' on a narrow winding mountain path. Can this be done? If so, how?

401. ZEN REMARKS

 401. In the vast wide world of Master Unmon, is there room for Bodhidharma? If so, where?

400. ZEN REMARKS

 400. Bodhidharma is a key figure in the Zen Buddhist tradition in that he is credited with transmitting Dhyana Buddhism from India to China where it was translated into C'han. Contemporary scholarship has raised questions about the historicity of Bodhidharma and his pivotal role linking Dhyana and C'han. Should it be demonstrated that Bodhidharma is a fictional character, how would this affect your practice of Zen? 

399. ZEN REMARKS

 399. Do you find yourself standing between an outer world and an inner world? If so, on what do you stand? 

398. ZEN REMARKS

 398. Clearly see that 'all five skandhas are empty' and realize for yourself 'how vast and wide the world is'. 

397. ZEN REMARKS

 397. My world, your world, the world -- are they the same or different? 

396. ZEN REMARKS

 396. Suppose you stand at a window of your house and gaze out upon the world. Is it simply out there?  Or does it press in upon you and, perhaps, beyond you? And now where are you, both in relation to yourself and the world? 

395. ZEN REMARKS

 395. Do you stand at a window in your room and survey the world vast and wide spread out before you? Is that world simply the object of an act of spontaneous extroversion? Is your relation to the vast wide world one of subject to object? Is the world -- your world -- vast and wide as it is, limited to what you can see, hear, taste, touch and smell?

394. ZEN REMARKS

 394. From what vantage point do you look out and see that the world is vast and wide? 

393. ZEN REMARKS

 393. Master Unmon said, 'See how vast and wide the world is! Why do you put on your seven-piece robe at the sound of the bell?' Is the master referring to the world of your ordinary everyday experience or does he have something else in mind?

392. ZEN REMARKS

392. Master  Gettan said to a monk: 'Keichu made a cart with a hundred wheels. If he removed the wheels and the axles, what would he make clear about the cart?' 

     A good koan to become intimate with in this time of pandemic. 

391. ZEN REMARKS

391. An old Chinese master put the question, 'Why has the foreigner from the West no beard?' Surely an odd question given that 'the foreigner from the West', that is, Bodhidharma, is always depicted with a big bushy beard. What is going on here? 

390. ZEN REMARKS

390. Thirty of us in a twenty-one day lockdown in a mountain zendo: time and opportunity to become ever more intimate with that mystery in which we live and move and have our being.