Weekly Koan Gathering

Here’s a selection from Acequias and Gates to accompany you and your koan this week:

When it’s time to get up off the cushion, take the koan with you. Carry it around in your pocket. Take it for a run or into the bath or to sleep. Where is that temple bell? Can I hear it now, standing on this street corner? If you absolutely have to get all discursive and intellectual about a koan, try to do it walking around instead of sitting, so that you avoid training yourself to go there in your meditation. Exhaust thinking about the koan, which is quite natural especially in the beginning, and see if you can start thinking, and running, and showering, with it.

Blue Cliff Record, Case 78.  Translation by Joan Sutherland and John Tarrant

Sixteen Bodhisattvas Enter the Bath
In the old days there were sixteen bodhisattvas. When it was time to bathe they got into the bath together. They suddenly realized the cause of water and said, “This subtle touch releases the brightness. We have become the sons and daughters of the Buddha.

Subtle touch is not ordinary touch plus the one who is touched, or where contact is considered touch but separation is not.

Remember that, while you are keeping company with a koan, anything that happens may be a sort of response to it.  If you look out of the corner of your eye, you may see this happening.

Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday,
Sarah and Andrew