March 4th, 2010
In Zen, words and thoughts about karma is death, not death itself since there IS no death due to relativity (emptiness). The Joshu mondo below is a great pointer to the detached attitude of Zen towards death and the message is that freeing oneself from fear of death is liberation from karma hence salvation:
“The world transcends (the dualism of) birth and death, it is like the flower in the air; the wise are free from (the ideas of being and non-being); yet a great compassionate heart is awakened in them.”
Lankavatara Sutra
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February 15th, 2010
The Koan of Pai-chang Huai-hai about Zen master Ma-tsu and his student Hyakujo ( Huai-hai) is a direct pointer to the absolute core of Zen that is to say Buddha-mind. Realizing Buddha-mind is the goal of Zen. In the Zen Buddhist doctrine, mind is the starting point, the focal point and also the culminating point in the liberated and purified enlightened person.
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February 4th, 2010
The koan “Buffalo Passes the Window” from The Gateless Gate is a great pointer to the concreteness of Zen. Much too often, Zen is treated as a complex or paradoxical kind of philosophy but Zen is the opposite. Zen is anti-philosophical and this koan is a clear-cut demonstration of Zen koans as simple powerful upayic tools that de-construct the dreamlike notion of Nirvana and enlightenment as something otherworldly, as something that can be attained. Instead it points to the concrete religiosity or spirituality of the everyday life, a spirituality that can be experienced directly since we are all Buddhas.
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January 29th, 2010
In my opinion Zen Master Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen (Joshu in Japanese) (778–897) is perhaps the greatest Zen master of all time. His sayings, of which many are koans, are probably the most profound and pure Zen surpassing most other Zen teachings as regards directness, efficiency and elegancy.
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January 19th, 2010
Joshu’s Dog is an amazing koan since it with one single word conveys the most profound truth of Zen by pointing to the eternal emptiness yet eternal creation of reality, and with such a stunning profundity that even Buddha is and is not. The koan is at the very limit of transmitting a non-verbal understanding of the essence of Zen.
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January 8th, 2010
Hui-neng’s question on the Original face is one of the best pointers to what Zen is among the many koans and sayings. This because the question of Hui-neng directs the mind towards not only what Mind is but towards time, life and death, identity,location,appearance, disappearance, flow and eternity. All of Zen seems to be contained in the question which first and foremost makes you contemplate. It goes like this:
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January 6th, 2010
The basics of Zen is actually very straightforward and not nearly as complicated or enigmatic as many think. Zen is a pragmatic tool of liberation from frozen words and concepts, not an esoteric philosophy for the few. There is in reality only three essential fields to grasp and the logic of Zen will open. These three points or steps are here summarized by Ch’ing-Yüan Wei-Hsin.
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December 25th, 2009
I have often wondered about why such a precise and zen-pointing word as “differentiation” is so neglected when it comes to explain what Zen is, since the word actually is a direct pointer to the Middle Way, to the emptiness of emptiness, that is, Prajna, intuitive knowledge or to be exact: Buddha-mind.
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December 20th, 2009
The koan “Tozan’s Three Pounds” uncovers the essence of Zen, an essence described in the Flower Sermon in which Śākyamuni Buddha transmitted direct prajñā to the disciple Mahākāśyapa:
I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma Gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.
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December 16th, 2009
Tokusan (Teh-shan Hsuan-chien, (779 – 865) was a great scholar of the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika). Learning that there was such a thing as Zen ignoring all the written scriptures and directly lying hands on one´s soul, he came to Ryutan (Lung-t’an) to be instructed in the doctrine.
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