Move, and your bury your body ten thousand feet deep;
don’t move and sprouts grow right where you are.
You must cast off both sides and let the middle go;
then you must buy some sandals and travel some more before you’ll really attain realization.
This is a beautiful kÅan, and is the first of many that we will work with together on the The Middle Way. KÅans are a direct pointing to ‘that which is beyond’. They have answers that are open to interpretation, with a single kÅan having up to 60-70 different views. In this kÅan, we investigate one view.
Here Dongshan’s looking at ideas relating to courses of action. He investigates running both to and from items and things. Stating that in both cases you become fixed to something. Letting the Middle go, pushes us even deeper, by saying that even by holding onto the middle way is a fixation. That this is still a form of running to or from. That The Middle Way is not concrete, not a fixed concept, but rather it’s something that flows, lives and is in the realm of action.
Now we learnt we can’t run, we can’t stop, we can’t even fix to an idea about the middle way. Where does that leave us? At this point with no where to go, we are shown that we must immerse and live, with travel meaning to enter into. It is here, we are told that this is the way that we begin to attain realization. Coming back to the title now, of No Grass, we find the icing on the cake. Grass in Zen is a metaphor for deliusion, the world of things. No Grass means a place of the Buddha, a place of No Thing, No Idea, No Self. It a direct pointing to Absolute, which this Koan presents.
Re-reading after this investigation, the conclusion reached is to not hold on. It’s to be as things are, to experience, and by the entering into things we become free and develop wisdom and our own realization.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about how this koan touches you, and what it points to for you. The more we share and work on a Koan, the greater our learning together, as an eSangha. (photo)
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Very nice idea. Sure it’s a good thing tho think about those koans. But then i thought they where personal given by a teacher only for the use of the student it was ment for at that time in his stage of development.
But sure we can train the mind and learn; keep on sending.
Be happy
Marnix
Speak, and nothing is communicated.
Force purity on yourself and bile appears.
A dancer in training is stiff and formal.
Forget how to dance and move in grace.
Loving Awareness
Indead a dancer in TRAINING is stiff and formal, so is a meditator in training. But a long the path you learn how to move by knowing there is only you and in happiness we start to dance without some one telling us how to move, we just move and dance. So I do dance in grace.
I know very little of Buddhism but I love these little koans (is that the correct plural). What I like best is how they are open to interpretation so they can speak to each one in the way that is most helpful. Perfect!
Wade, your interpretation of this koan reminds me a passage I once read by Franz Kafka:
You do not need to leave the room….
remain sitting at your table and listen
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
@Marnix; Thanks for both of your comments. Koans can be studied without being formally given by a teacher. They are still very useful and can illuminate the way. I have heard dharma talks given by teachers to the general public about Koans. The difference as I see it is that not being formal, it’s not part of a student training. Blue Cliff Record, The True Dharma Eye etc are books containing Rinzai and Soto Koans, there’s even a book out there containing ‘the answers’ to the koans that was published around 1970. I hear teachers can smell a ‘cheating’ student a mile away
Thank for your encouragement, we will continue to work with these Koans when I get access to the books again. I’ve got one saved up but haven’t had time to work with it.
@Matthew&Marnix; I like your points of view of the dancer and learning/developing.
@Nick; Yup, that’s the correct plural. Thank you also for your support of the koans. I agree with you, there’s no need to be anyone or anything to read and investigate a koan. They are just as personal and reflective to each person; there’s so many freedom and individuality in each koan. Thank you for the reference to Kafka, that’s a beautiful passage.
Peace to you all.
May all being have peace, may all being be happy.
—Wade
Themiddleway
PS Sorry for the slow reply to comments, I’m now in San Francisco Zen Center, internet access is still tricky
I especially like the one about finding a stick with one end.
Or my personal Koan that baffles me always when I attempt to contemplate it.
It goes like this…..
Of course it is easy to Imagine and manage a thought that has no end;much harder still to imagine or to manage that being endless, that it never actually began.
I am trying to contemplate the origin of no origin,
and it literally short circuits my brain.
I can not stretch my imagination wide enough
to en compensate everywhere,and every when.
Thanks for reminding me,now where is that stick?
Joe..
@Joe,
Wow. Awesome koan. My take is that it’s not that thing’s don’t arise, to deny that would be to deny reality. There is state changes. What’s to see is that the state changes take place in a state that does not change. For there to be beginning and end, to space required for that means there is more than that. And that is the eternal.
Do not think of origin, experience and live, as Cedric would say.
My personal Koan of the moment will be posted in the next few days. The ex-Abbotess of San Francisco Zen Center spoke of it the other night in a Dharma talk.
May all beings be happy.
Wade