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Gateless Gate & Blue Cliff Record
Hozan
Veteran
A thread for discussion on work contained therein.
For those not familiar....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Barrier
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Comments
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate
Joshu's Dog
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate/Joshu's_Dog
So I read about Joshu’s Dog, and the commentary, and I just wondered if anyone else thought that it was a lot of mental gymnastics to get to a feeling of no-mind. It’s a question with no sensible answer, except the answer that is “no-thing”.
Thats koans for ya....
I believe koans are meant to get practitioners to give up in a fundamental way, and when they give up they get it.
For me koans are a way of "forcing" the mind out of dualistic thought by giving it a riddle that is impossible to solve by dualistic thinking. Sometimes I use the Korean Hua-dou "What is this?" referring to "myself" and my thoughts just stop - no answer arises. I haven't read through the Gateless Gate in a few years. When I studied Zen with Jundo Cohen it was Shikantaza.
How could a gate have no gate? If there's no gate, then how could it be a gate?
What is the sound of one gate crashing?
What about that ... this is a practice?
As we know a cohen is a roshi rabbi
https://patch.com/california/pacificpalisades/not-your-typical-rabbia-sit-down-with-sensei-don-singer
You sit, you move, you die anyway.
A diplomat is one who thinks twice before saying nothing.
– unknown
I have to apologise... Just as an addenda, I see the thread title and read 'Cliff Richard'....
When it’s just a hole in the wall... but seriously, there is a kind of fascination to how the mind goes about trying to find answers to questions which have no good answers, it’s like trying and failing to scratch an itch.
Blue Cliff Richard...from Avatar (the movie)...??
??
I think that's the point of koans. To tie hands behind your back and then give you an itch. What to do then?!
Reminds me of Case 43 of the Blue Cliff Record
Case:
A monk asked Tozan, "Cold and heat come. How can we avoid them?
Tozan said, "Why don't you go to the place where there is neither cold nor heat?" "
What is the place where there is neither cold nor heat?" the monk asked.
Tozan said, "When it's cold, kill yourself with cold. When it's hot, kill yourself with heat."
I suppose that that itch, in meditation, is a clue to the nature of mind. But it seems silly to try to penetrate the meaning of the koan with mind and reason... after all the koan is made to be a question without a good answer.
I’ve done koan practice for years with various teachers. All of the koans have a good answer.
And of course a bad answer as well. The bad answer is the intellectual answer, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good one. Doing koan practice with a teacher, you must provide the good answer in order to progress in the practice. One could say that finding the good answer, is itself, the progression.
Interesting
I’ve never done koan practice. Would you say it is a knack? Or is there a common theme?
I would say the common theme is seeing true nature, because that's what all koans point to.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate/Hyakujo's_Fox
You have seen Joshu's dog...but what of Hyakujo's fox.. pray tell...
I did not read "The Gateless Gate," either.
But reading koans has taken me beyond being stuck in the intellectual speculation of most Western philosophy and the conditioned response of always striving to come up with a neat answer to everything.
The key to all answers lies in that baffled nook of nonsense and absurd as the mind shuts up and opens up to the manifold possibilities of non-thinking in rational ways.
The gateless gate koans as one will find - are tools to open up the mind
A mind that's full of useless junk- in which the koan is designed to debunk
But using one's Intellect only locks- for the answer is somewhat paradox
Solving Zen riddles can be fun-for when you "think" you have it, the answer comes undone
It's enough to drive you around the bend-which for the intellect... perhaps a good place to send