Working with Koans

in Zen Buddhism

Albert Low

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Version 2012-01-28

Copyright 2009 Albert Low

ISBN 978-0-986-63183-2

http://www.albertlow.ca

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Table of Contents

1. Why use koans?

2. Koans Do Not Contain Symbols

3. A Koan Is Not an Exercise or Technique

4. Koans Have No Teaching

5. A Koan Is Not A Mantra

6. Prajnâ: Arouse the Mind Without Resting It Upon Anything

7. Ordinary Mind Is The Way

8. Working On Koans

9. Faith, Doubt and Perseverance

10. Different Kinds of Koans

11. The Essence and the Function

12. The Break through Koans

13. Koan 17 of the Hekiganroku

14. Koan 1 of the Mumonkan

15. Notes

16. About the Author

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Why use koans?

When we use words, as I am using them now, truth slips through the cracks. Words freeze experience into solid blocks. We try to fit the blocks together with reason and seal them together with logic, but they fit badly, and we cannot help leaving gaps through which the vitality of a situation leaks away. ‘Silence,’ ‘presence,’ ‘hearing,’ ‘something,’ these are all words and, as such, are part of what we call the world. Yet, as a moment’s meditation will show, silence itself is not “out there,” nor is presence. It is not “in here” either. To believe the inside of the skull, or the inside of the chest cavity, is in some way nearer truth than “out there,” is still to be lost in the building blocks of words. “Out there,” “in here” -- more words and more confusion, where the truth is so simple and direct.

Because words can no more hold the truth than a net can hold water, we use koans. Koans are sayings, or doings, of Zen masters, the patriarchs and Buddha. Take for example the koan: The Sound of One Hand clapping. In its entirety it reads: “You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping?” The obvious, intellectual answer is, No sound at all! But then what is this No sound? In other words, is it just silence?

If one is to work on this koan, indeed on any koan, one must demonstrate its meaning. Explanatory words -- such as “the two hands represent duality, the one hand is unity” or “the sound of one hand is the sound of the true self” -- are useless. A teacher of Zen would reject them out of hand, all the while demanding a real response. Words talk about true nature and, as it were, hold it at arm’s length. One must become the sound of one hand to be able to give a real response, and in this way see for oneself that the sound of one hand is the full expression of the master’s and one’s own awakened state.

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Koans Do Not Contain Symbols

As I said, a koan is a saying or doing of a master; it issues directly and spontaneously from the awakened mind. A master’s response is like sound coming from a gong that is struck: the gong is struck: sound streams out without pause. I also said that to see into a koan is to be one with the awakened mind of the master; this is to be one with your own awakened mind. But, again, to talk about being one with your own awakened mind smothers the fire of truth. Words, symbols, parables, signs, all reflect the sound of one hand, the way the dew on the grass at morning reflects the light of the sun. In their way words are small miracles, but that which performs the miracle of speech is a greater miracle yet. Koans are about that miracle; or rather they are not about it, but are its full manifestation.

Metaphors bring us close to true nature because they point to it. Some people are of the opinion that all words are in some way metaphors. Even if this is so, most metaphors are dead and have lost their power to point to the truth. Music is also a language of metaphor and so are dance, gesture and other art forms. Metaphors make the peculiar claim “this is that” but all the time we know this is not that. Shakespeare, for example, speaks of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” This is a powerful metaphor, but we all know perfectly well that fortune has neither slings nor arrows. In a similar way we talk of true nature; but we must be careful because, using a formulation of Buddha, “true nature is not true nature, that is why we call it true nature.” True nature in this case is a metaphor; “this is that” “this is not that.” When we know intimately the truth of Buddha’s formulation, we can use words with impunity. It is said that Buddha uses words as words. This is like an entomologist using a magnifying glass to see an insect but he does not mistake the glass for the insect. Until we know this intimately and can use words as words, we must beware of words and metaphors, as we beware of scorpions and poisonous snakes, and treat them with the utmost care and respect.

Parables are extended metaphors, and we must not make the mistake of trying to interpret koans as we might interpret parables. This is not to say that parables have no place on the spiritual path. On the contrary, they and metaphors can help enormously to awaken the mind to possibilities that otherwise would remain dormant and unrecognized. But parables can only awaken possibilities; they can only take us to the door. We must take another step yet to enter our true home. The danger with parables, as well as with metaphors, and why we must treat them with such caution, is that by awakening possibilities, they open new horizons, give birth to new hope. In the radiance of this hope, in the scope of these new possibilities, we all too easily succumb to the mistaken belief that we have found true gold when all we have found are its tracings.

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A Koan Is Not an Exercise or Technique

We use a technique or a tool to accomplish something and, similarly, we do exercises, go through a set of actions, mental or physical, to attain some end. But if we look upon awaking as an end or a goal to be accomplished, we deny the truth of presence. We do not have to reach silence or attain it. We do not require any special method to come to silence. Silence is silence, we do not even have to hear it with our ears. By the same token we do not have to do something to attain true nature. For one thing, true nature is not something. For another, all doing, all saying, all techniques, stream out of true nature. We think in terms of technique because we are so fascinated by language. A technique is “someone” “doing” “something” “to attain” “something”. However, a well-known Buddhist sutra, The Prajnâpâramitâ Hridaya, tells us “not even wisdom can be attained, attainment too is emptiness.” “Someone” “doing” “something” “to attain” “something” are all building blocks. All are suspended in presence like dust motes in the ray of sunlight in a darkened room. No attainment is the radical teaching of Zen, so radical it is often overlooked, even by those who preach it.

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Koans Have No Teaching

Another well-known sutra, The Diamond Sutra, is several pages long. It begins with a disciple asking Buddha for his teaching, and the subsequent pages of the Sutra is a response to that request. At one point Buddha asks his disciple, Subhuti, “Has the Tathagata a teaching to enunciate?” Subhuti answers “As I understand Buddha's meaning, there is no formulation of truth called consummation of incomparable enlightenment. Moreover the Tathagata has no formulated teaching to enunciate.” No formulated teaching to enunciate; how are we to understand this apparent contradiction? The sutra has a number of pages of teaching yet Subhuti says Buddha has no teaching.

Subhuti helps us to understand by saying, “The Tathagata has said that truth is uncontainable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is it not.” A koan too is not a formulation of truth, it too has no teaching. Indeed, not only does it have no teaching, it has no content either. The difference between a teaching made up of words, symbols, metaphors, and a koan is like the difference between a picture and a window. If you were to look at a Gainsborough painting you could learn a lot about rural England in the artist’s time. In contrast, think about a window, which is without content and without teaching. However, all a picture can do is reflect and refract the light. A window lets pour through, unobstructed, the living light itself.

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A Koan Is Not A Mantra

A mantra is a common device used in spiritual training. One repeats a word or phrase over and over. The etymological roots of the word mantra are man, which in Sanskrit means “mind,” and tra “to protect.” A mantra therefore protects the mind from the effects of the deep schism in the very heart of being by giving it a stable center.

A Christian mantra, made famous by an anonymous writer of The Way of a Pilgrim, is, ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.’ It was used by the Desert Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries who retired to the desert for a life of solitude and prayer. Another Christian mantra is ‘Ave Maria.’ In the Buddhist tradition, a sect called the Pure Land uses the mantra ‘Namu Amidha Butsu.’ The mantra means, “Praise to the Buddha of boundless light.” At the end of the Prajna Paramita Hrdya, which is chanted in many Zen temples and monasteries, a mantra is given, ‘Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!’ It means “Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone quite beyond, Bodhi, rejoice!” Bodhi is the living light that streams through the window when we have gone beyond all the stains of the mind. Hindus, Sufis, and Taoists all have their own versions of mantras, and all use beads, or rosaries in the Catholic tradition, as an aid in mantric practice.

Imagine for the moment a leaderless group of restless, agitated people quarreling among themselves, creating feelings of insecurity, hostility, and anxiety. Without a leader to check them tension will rise steadily in the group and the group will be quite powerless. Now suppose that a leader is appointed and is given full authority from a source respected by all members of the group. The power of the group will now be harmonized: tension, restlessness, and insecurity will decline; a feeling of well-being will reign. Such is the role of a mantra.

Although it gives a harmonizing center, a mantra also closes the mind. Indeed, if it is used without adequate supervision by a teacher who has used the mantra himself or herself over a long period of time, it can have a deleterious effect on the mind, closing it off from its source, and effectively blocking all spiritual progress. Hakuin, a famous seventeenth century Zen master, is particularly critical of indiscriminate use of mantras.

A mantra takes the form of an affirmation, but a koan takes the form of questioning and doubt. This in effect opens the mind. You can prove this yourself right now by simply having a question, any question, come into your mind. Using a koan in this way opens the mind and gives you the chance to go beyond the need for a center, to go to the light of the mind. When we start working with a koan, such as Joshu’s Mu! (the koan that I discuss in part 2) we do often use it as a mantra just to keep the mind steady. But later, with the help of a competent teacher, we bring deeper, more creative levels of the mind into play by arousing the mind without resting it upon anything, and it is from these deeper levels the koan gets its power.

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Prajnâ: Arouse the Mind Without Resting It Upon Anything

The Diamond Sutra is an important sutra in the Zen Buddhist tradition. It was made popular in China by the sixth century Zen patriarch Hui Neng, who came to deep awakening when he heard an itinerant monk chanting the lines, “Arouse the mind without resting it upon anything,” which come from The Diamond Sutra.

This sutra belongs to the Prajnâpâramitâ school of Buddhism that burst upon the spiritual scene of India about the time of the birth of Jesus and spread throughout the rest of Asia. Pâramitâ means “to cross over to the other side of the ocean of birth and death.” The phrase “ocean of birth and death” is used to indicate the restless, stormy and bitter life of the human being.

Prajnâ means “aroused mind”. The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Joshu’s Mu! both call on Prajnâ for their resolution. In other words, to see into a koan is just that: to arouse the mind without resting it on anything.

We must not be led to believe that arousing the mind in this way is something mystical. It is something quite ordinary. Every night while we sleep deeply without dreams, the mind is not resting upon anything, although of course it is not aroused. During the day the mind is constantly aroused, but it is also resting, or clinging to all sorts of things. Prajnâ is therefore waking sleep. Hakuin wrote of his disappointment at not being able to attain “the state wherein waking and sleeping are the same.” The great Hindu teacher Ramana Maharshi also said that samadhi is waking sleep.

Prajnâ and samâdhi, or dhyâna as it is known in Zen, are different in emphasis only. Whereas Prajnâ emphasizes arousing the mind, dhyâna, or samâdhi, emphasizes not resting it on anything. We all know the conditions of sleep and waking, we just do not know the two together, that is all. In this condition of waking sleep a turnabout in the mind is possible, what is known in Sanskrit as paravritti, and in Japanese as kensho or Satori.

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Ordinary Mind Is The Way

Zen insists that ordinary mind is the way. The Diamond Sutra opens with the following account:

One day, at breakfast time, the world honored one put on his robe and, carrying his bowl, made his way into the great city of Shravasti to beg for his food. In the midst of the city he begged from door to door according to the rule. This done, he returned to his retreat and ate his meal. When he had finished he put away his robe and begging bowl, washed his feet, arranged his seat and sat down.

This is the description of a very ordinary state of mind. The word Buddha originally just meant waking up from sleep, and only gradually did it acquire the more exalted meaning of spiritual awakening. In English we have the expression “to come to.” For example, should one faint one would later “come to”; or one is walking along a street in a dreamy state and suddenly one comes to. This ordinary mind is the foundation of Zen practice.

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Working On Koans

Each koan in its own way opens onto the koan of everyday mind. Koans are not tests of our spiritual strength or progress; to use them as criteria for determining if a person is ready to teach others, as is often done, is to abuse them. Deep within our minds is a schism, a basic double bind. The word exist means “to stand outside of oneself”, from ex “outside of” and sistere “to stand” - thus, to be separated from oneself. Yet all the while Buddhism affirms that we are whole and complete and cannot possibly be otherwise. How is it possible then to exist, to be outside of oneself? The illogic and impossibility of our situation is mirrored one way or another in all koans.

To work on koans we must have utmost faith they are indeed resolvable on their own terms, that they are in their own way intensely meaningful. Therefore we should not say such things as: koans “are so phrased that they deliberately throw sand in our eyes to force us to open our mind’s eye and see the world and everything in it without distortion” because this can create problems. Although koans have no content they are not mindless mumbles. Moreover because they open onto the koan of every day mind we do not have to evoke any special state of mind such as a trance, or any so-called elevated spiritual state of mind to work with them

A Koan is not a Chinese enigma but a question of life and death; a question of our own spiritual life and death. Working on a koan is to work on ourselves and the first thing we must do is to make it our own. The koan must in some way open up our own deep torment or dilemma. Unless it does this it will be seen simply as an exercise to strengthen concentration, to come to awakening, or to achieve some other result. As such an exercise it will not be able to engage our heart and mind in their entirety and so will never yield its secret. Therefore to make it our own we should alter it, add to it, subtract from it, until we have absorbed ourselves in it enough so that it is part of our selves. Although the koan must ultimately be addressed and resolved as given, and on its own terms, by working it around it becomes accessible, something that it rarely is when one first reads it.

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Faith, Doubt and Perseverance

Hakuin said that to practice Zen one needs great faith, great doubt and great determination.

Faith

Presence is never absent, so we always works on a koan knowing fully its import. In other words our aim is not simply to find out something we did not know. To repeat, koans do not contain teaching. Therefore we do not start from the standpoint of “I don’t know, I must find out.” Rather we start from the point of “I know; how does this koan help me to express that knowing?” This “I know’ is the full expression of faith.

A basic teaching of all schools of Buddhism is that from the beginning all beings are Buddha, [1] and in so far as Buddha means awakened one, or knowing one, each of us does know, but this knowing is hidden in the many sheaths that make up our repertoire of knowledge and experience. Someone asked Yasutani Roshi, “What is the difference between you and me?” Yasutani replied, “There is no difference except I know it.” A beginner and a master are not different except the master has liberated knowing from its sheaths, whereas the beginner always knows something. Great faith is therefore not great faith in Buddha, in Zen, in a teacher. Buddha, Zen, and teacher are all potential sheaths that once more can trap knowing and crystallize it into being “something.” Great Faith is great faith in oneself; not oneself as an isolated, separate individual, but oneself as Buddha. To appreciate this fully one must be able to appreciate the Christian mystic who said, “If faith, then faith.”

Doubt

Another basic requirement for working on a koan, in particular a breakthrough koan, is the doubt sensation. We have said that deep in our hearts is a schism, a contradiction. I have elaborated upon this contradiction in other of my writings and will not burden the present work by repeating this explanation. In any case, no such explanation is necessary if one is going to work on a koan. If you will sit quietly for a few minutes you will become aware of this schism because a tension naturally arises. Normally, we try to do something to get rid of this tension and so calm ourselves. One great self-calming god of our age is television, which enables us to leak away this vital tension. Another much more subtle way to leak away this tension is to ‘practice’ Zen or some other spiritual way. We can then console ourselves with the thought that if we ‘work’ with the tension, if we concentrate, meditate, or contemplate, the future will in some way be better. However, if we cannot do something, if we cannot lose ourselves in a television program, in a book or in gossip, if we cannot engage in some ‘spiritual’ activity, then we feel restless, agitated, and ill at ease.

The doubt sensation comes when we let go of all self calming-devices; but these devices become ever more subtle and difficult to detect as we go deeper into the practice. One after the other we must let go of ways by which we evade the tension, restlessness, and agitation. We can do this only in the light of great faith. In turn, the greater our faith, the greater the doubt we can tolerate. Perhaps doubt is not the most appropriate word because it gives the impression that working with a koan is an intellectual affair, but a koan, as we have said, must engage the whole of our being. Instead of doubt sensation it might be better to call it the dilemma sensation or the double bind.

What is the double bind sensation? It is important to realize each koan has a bite, a twist, that is its entrance. This bite could be looked on as the double bind. To illustrate what he meant by double bind, Gregory Bateson, who coined the term, used a koan in which the master says, “If you say this is a stick I will punish you; if you say it is not a stick I will punish you.” For Bateson the double bind was the result of mutually contradictory commands being given to a person by others in authority with the threat of punishment if both commands were not carried out. It is therefore learned in experience.

The double bind with which we work in koans is inherent, the wound in our being. Experience, existence, and consciousness are born from it. A koan, being a window on to our true self, is also a window on this primary manifestation of our true self. Until we come to full awakening, this double bind, with its accompanying sensation of tension, its feeling of confusion, anguish, and anxiety, and its intellectual nagging, doubting, and questioning, is always present to some degree or other. The ground of our practice is just this confused mass, the massa confusa of the alchemists. The masters call it the great doubt.

Perseverance

Shibayama, a contemporary Zen master who died quite recently, said that working with a koan was something like a blind man working his way along the edge of a cliff with the help of a stick. Someone comes along seizes the stick and throws it away, whirls the blind man around three times and throws him to the ground, and then leaves him to find his own way.

In other words, because koans are ways by which we work with the primordial double bind, at first they are not clear and light, but dark and confusing. It is only after working with them for a long while, letting go the erroneous ways that we have used in the past to cope with, or to try to escape from, the primordial double bind that they are eventually seen as windows rather than impenetrable walls. Hakuin refers to them as “those vile koans,” and Joshu, when someone asked him about the Way, said, “It is bitter.” In the Christian tradition this bitter way is given form in a well-known book, The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. Whoever has worked on koans knows well this dark night, this long expanse of dry and discouraging inner terrain that Gurdjieff likened to the Gobi desert. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” It is only those who do indeed so hunger and thirst who can undertake this pilgrimage to the center of their being across the waste land of a tormented soul.

A dialogue between a visitor and the great contemporary Hindu teacher Nisargadatta sheds light on working with koans even though it is very unlikely Nisargadatta knew anything about koans or about Zen. Nisargadatta had spoken of himself as being 'immutable' and the visitor asked, “How can I know what immutably means directly and not, as I do, through its dictionary meaning?”

Nisargadatta replied, “The word itself is the bridge. Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, dive into it with earnest perseverance: endure all delays and disappointments, till suddenly the mind turns around, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word. It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only. The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple so wonderfully easy. But as long as you are interested in your present way of living you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.”[2]

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Different Kinds of Koans

Every koan expresses true nature, that which I have called ‘presence’ or ‘knowing without the sheaths of knowledge.’ Sometimes the koan expresses knowing as emptiness, limitless and boundless. For example, in the first koan of the collection of koans called Hekiganroku, Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, “What is your teaching?” Bodhidharma replied, “Vast emptiness and nothing that can be called holy.” At other times the koan expresses knowing as oneness. For example, a monk asked Joshu, “What is Buddha?” Joshu answered, “The oak tree in the garden.” Sometimes, as in a koan in which Joshu examines two hermits, it expresses knowing as not-twoness; and at others, as in the case of the koan of every day mind to which I have already referred, it expresses knowing as interpenetration. Some koans fit into more than one of these categories, some fit into all, and of course some do not fit into any of them. Emptiness, oneness, not-twoness, perfect interpenetration, these are all modes of mind at play. In this regard Buddha on one occasion used the analogy of milk which is now butter, now cheese, now yogurt, but always milk.

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Empty handed I carry the hoe.

Walking I ride the water buffalo.

Crossing the bridge and lo!

The bridge moves while the river stands still.

On top of Mount Fuji a cloud cooks rice.

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Each of these statements is used as a koan. The first four are from a verse written by Layman P’ang, a very famous Zen Buddhist of the 8th century, the last from another source.

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The Essence and the Function

Sometimes koans express presence as essence, sometimes as action. For example, a master and monk were hoeing the garden. The monk asked the master, "What is it?” The master straightened up and stuck his hoe into the ground. The monk said, “You have the essence but you miss the function.” The master responded, “All right, what is it?” The monk went on hoeing the ground. The master said, “You have the function but you miss the essence.” An example of this kind of koan is no. 48 in which both essence and function are expressed.

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The Break through Koans

Koans can be divided into breakthrough koans and subsequent koans. Working with breakthrough koans one comes to awakening, or kensho as it is called in Japan. With kensho one truly sees from the very beginning all beings are Buddha, all are already the awakened one. We must repeat, however, that this does not mean that if you work diligently on the koan you will eventually come to awakening. It means rather that because you are already Buddha you eventually see how the koan expresses this truth. This is what is meant by seeing into a koan. Joshu’s Mu!, the Sound of One Hand Clapping, and What Is Your Face Before Your Parents Were Born? are all breakthrough koans; so is the question “who am I?” or “who is the master?” Some people see into these koans in a matter of weeks or months, others take years. A Catholic priest spent forty years working on the koan Mu!. Mumon, the master who compiled the Mumonkan, worked on Mu! for six years. Let it be said, however, one who sees into a koan quickly is not necessarily an advanced person and one who takes a long while is not retarded. Each of us is a complete meal. Each is unique, no difference can be found. From the beginning all beings are Buddha.

We must consider a koan from the point of view of the spiritual maturity of the protagonists. Invariably in the koan a monk asks a master a question. We must ask ourselves, is the monk a beginner, has he already seen deeply into the truth of his own being, or has he simply had a brief kensho? Look at each koan from these different perspectives. Look at the response given by the master and suppose it to have been given by a novice, and then ask yourself what would be the difference if such a response were given by a novice or by a master, even though they both used the same words?

Some koans take the form of dharma combat or dharma duel. An awakened monk or master will challenge another equally awakened monk by asking a question. Although the question seems innocuous, it is a bait that hides a barb. An unawakened person would seize the bait and be caught by trying to respond at the verbal level on which the question is asked. A master, however, will take the bait but avoid the barb. We will be encountering some dharma duels in the koans that follow.

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Koan 17 of the Hekiganroku

Introduction

Cutting through nails and breaking steel for the first time, one could be called a Master of the First Principle. If you run away from arrows and evade swords you will be a failure in Zen. The place where even a needle cannot enter I’ll leave aside for a while, but when the foaming billows wash the sky, what will you do with yourself then?

Case

A monk asked Kyorin, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west?” “Sitting long and getting tired.”

Verse

One, two, a thousand and tens of thousands,

Take off the bit and set down the load.

If you come and go following another’s lead,

I’ll strike you as Shiko struck old Grindstone.

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Kyorin was a follower of Ummon; he worked with him for about twenty years. During the first eighteen years, all Ummon ever said to him was “What is it?” At the end of eighteen years, Kyorin turned around and said, “I understand.” Ummon said, “Well, why don’t you demonstrate it?” Kyorin had to stay another three years. It is pointless to understand; there is not anything to understand. From the beginning not a thing is. The problem is we try to interpret that, we try to understand it. We try to find a context for that being said. In the same way, when we are working on Mu, we try to find a context. “What is this No? What does it mean?” we ask ourselves. We try to find a place for it in our experience. Of course, there is no place for Mu in our experience. It is exactly the same when you are asking the question “Who?” It has no existence whatsoever.

Someone asked Kyorin, “What marvellous medicine does the Master prescribe?” He says, “It is not other than the ten thousand things.” What is this medicine? What is this that can resolve all our doubts? Do you see the floor? Take that twice a day. You think it is something other; there’s got to be something more. When it is said, “Everyday mind is the way,” someone said that it means the mind purified of all of its doubts, concerns and conflicts. No, no. Everyday mind is the way. This is why we say don’t worry about the personality. The personality has got enough to worry about; we don’t have to join in. From the beginning not a thing is. There is no personality.

We try to indicate, we try to point a direction by showing that anything that you feel is something now. That there is really something -- this body, this cushion, this floor, this room -- must be questioned. “Isn’t the room here?” people will ask; but that very room has passed, already gone, before they have ended their sentence. The room is now a different room. Just as they end the sentence, they, in that process, are changing the room because of course the room includes the sound, “Is not this the room?” The room isn’t the four walls, the floor; it is only when we use our minds, when we conceptualise, when we pick out, when we describe, when we define, that a room becomes something with four walls and a floor. One cannot count all that makes up a room. Once one sees this one realises that there is nothing stable for a moment: personality, body, self, walls. Once one sees it this way, then that very sense of “something” drops away. Like Henri Bergson said, “It’s not that things change; things are change.” Once there is change, from moment to moment, not a thing is. This is why Kyorin says the medicine is not other than the ten thousand things.

We are not suggesting for one moment that you try to see a void, a hole, or an absence, where beforehand you saw the room. When we say not a thing is, we are not digging holes in existence. It is that isness that is the question. What does it mean to be? The isness of the room, the isness of yourself are not different. To see into one is to see into the other. What is this isness? It is not permanence; it is not an enduring substratum, a ghostlike support. What is this isness then? When you are asking Mu, No, it is a clean sweep. No isness, no permanence, no essence.

The questioner goes on to ask, “What happens to one who takes this medicine?” Kyorin replies, “Sip some and see.” It is no good talking about this really; everything comes down to “Everyday mind is the way.” He starts off, “Cutting through nails and breaking steel.” We all know this. It is that quality that comes about the second or third day of sesshin; it is a very fine description of that feeling, a kind of pain, but at the same time there is an austerity, at the same time there is a cutting through. Underlying it is what we call the desert. When he says, “If you run away from arrows and evade swords you will be a failure in Zen,” he means that one must face this quality of zazen, this hard, austere, merciless quality of zazen; one must walk through it upright, open, but to be able to do that one must have come to terms with boredom.

Boredom is so prosaic that one wonders how it could fit into spiritual practice. How can one talk about facing boredom when we’ve got this great work of seeing into our true nature? It took me a long time to admit to boredom. It seemed indecent, letting the side down. This is not the valiant spiritual warrior who strides through the battle -- sitting in boredom, being bored.

There was an interesting commencement address that was given to some eager beaver students who had just graduated, ready to undertake the exciting and adventurous process of life: the person giving the address had the courage to get up and tell them that for much of their lives they were going to be bored. He said that boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. A very interesting statement. You have got the way that you feel things ought to be, and then time intervenes. It is like when you are waiting in a doctor’s waiting room: you’ve got your priorities, things that you want to get on with, and you’ve got to sit in this waiting room for two or three hours. It is an invasion of time into your set of values.

He went on to say, “It puts your existence into its proper perspective, the net result of which is humility.” This is what the desert, what boredom can do for us. It is a violation of our expectations like nothing else. It cuts through and it cuts us down to size, and this is why it is so difficult to work with boredom, to face it, to open up to it. Sitting in boredom is just like cutting through nails and breaking steel. Many people when they are practising feel they can’t be bored -- they’ve got to get on, got to do the work, got to strive -- and so they conjure up difficulties and start working with those difficulties, they find something, anything, that will distract, give the impression that things are happening, give the impression that really this is true spiritual work that they are doing, and that they are not just sitting, bored. To work with it means being completely one with it, being completely open to it, not judging yourself in relation to it, not judging it in relation to yourself, just entering into the condition, letting go of the very word “boredom,” entering into that state of no-thing-ness, nothingness.

One reaction to boredom is anger, rage. It comes from a petulant belief that things ought to be different, that this is not how things ought to be. I didn’t opt to suffer in this way, or whatever. So there is a kind of fury that develops. Or else there is a deep sense of depression, a feeling of helplessness in the face of it, a feeling that one is unworthy, that one should be able to deal with it but one can’t. Or there can be a deep anxiety that comes in relation to it, a sense of time wasting, of losing time, of time not being productive and fruitful, a kind of panicky feeling. But in the face of this, for the first time really, one begins to realise that one cannot do. This is one of Gurdjieff’s dictums: “Man cannot do.” It is a very profound statement. We think that we are in charge. We think that we are “the master of our fate, the captain of our soul,” as an English poet would have it. We think all we have to do is make up our minds and that will be enough. And then we sit cutting through nails and breaking steel. It is not enough to accept boredom, you must embrace it. It is only when you have completely embraced it that you can go beyond it.

Everything else that comes in sesshin comes as a consequence of the way that you open yourself to this desert of the soul. “Above all, don’t think you’ve goofed somewhere along the line. Don’t try to retrace your steps to correct the error,” the speaker told the graduates. This is one of the things we feel, “This isn’t it; this isn’t practice. How can this do any good whatsoever? What is the point of sitting with this anguish, this torment, this nothing? I must have lost my way.”

There is still in many people the feeling that the spiritual path is a path of ecstasy, or a path of enthusiasm, or a path of excitement. We want to see dazzling images of Christs or Buddhas. Not this. Yet it is in the complete absence of excitement, bereft of enthusiasm, dried up of emotion that the true cleansing of the soul, the real purging of the spirit takes place. As W. H. Auden said, “Believe your pain.” We say, have faith in your suffering; it is leading you, it is guiding you, it is working for you. Without it, nothing can be accomplished. The sense of self has been built out of cast iron layered onto reinforced concrete and lined with impenetrable steel. Do you think you are going to cut through it in a weekend? Of course it is going to take time, energy, pain and hard work, and working in this desert is the work. It is not a cul-de-sac. It is not straying from the path. We keep saying that what is good in practice may not be good in life and what is good in life may not be good in practice.

It is one of the most painful experiences, to be utterly bored. And in case you still think that this has got no bearing on spiritual work, let me read you something from St. John of the Cross with which you are familiar, but please, listen to it as though for the first time. He talks about getting to the point where one can no longer advance another step in meditation “since one’s internal senses are deeply submerged in this night, and one is left in such dryness that spiritual things and devout exercises, wherein one formerly found pleasure and delight appear bitter and insipid.”

We always come in to practice bathed in the magic and miracle of “At last I’ve found my way home.” The beginner’s mind is wonderful to see. One sees it in workshops. It is a pleasure to give workshops. People’s eyes are sparkling after the workshop; there is a sense of energy and one can feel that. Sometimes people write afterward saying how much their lives have changed and how they now see what is necessary in their life. A lot of the accounts that one reads about spiritual work and spiritual experience are written by people who have had a week at the most of meditation, perhaps twenty minutes a day, and they go into raptures about how important the practice is. It is this kind of writing that leads one to believe that this is really what spiritual practice is about, these great moments of insight, these dazzling times of serenity, this sense of peace and beauty and wonder that pervades. And this is why it is that St. John says that the devout exercises wherein he formerly found pleasure and delight appear bitter and insipid. We know that changeover. That’s when one begins to think, “My God, what have I let myself in for?” Of course, it is at this stage that ninety percent of the people that came in and enjoyed the magic and were going to practice and wanted to go to monasteries, leave.

St. John says, “As long as the aridity, the dryness of the night of sense lasts, spiritual persons suffer great tribulations.” This is so. One feels one wants to get on, this is not right, there’s got to be something else. Why am I doing this? What have I done wrong? Is there another teaching? How can I get out of this? Many people go off into a sort of dopey state, drift off into a kind of half sleep. Other people get all kinds of thoughts, images, sexual images and feelings, all kinds of past woes, anguish, regrets, anything the mind can dish up rather than stay in this aridity and dryness of the night of sense. This anguish that people feel comes not only on account of the dryness they experience but because of the fear that they have lost their way. This is the biggest challenge. One cannot help but feel that this is not right. It is all right to hear about it when one listens to a teisho. One accepts it. Yes, this is good, next time it comes I’m really going to work with it. And then it comes. This isn’t right. What’s the point? What’s it about? In other words this sense, “I am in control, I am the one, I can do it,” just won’t give up. As we say, there are people that rage against this.

St. John says, “These people, when they get a glimpse of this concrete and perfect life of the spirit, which manifests itself in the complete absence of all sweetness, which manifests in aridity, distaste, and in the many trials that are the true spiritual cross, they flee from it as from death.” He goes on to say, “They seek themselves in God” -- in our terminology, they seek themselves in awakening, they feel they have come here for awakening -- “which is the very opposite of love.” To seek oneself in awakening is “to seek the favours and refreshing delights that come from it.” In other words, it is not really awakening; it is the feelings that they believe are going to accompany it, and above all the feeling of uniqueness and superiority which they will at last be able to enjoy to the fullest. He says, “Whereas to seek God in oneself is to incline oneself to choose all that is most distasteful, and this is the love of God.” Unquestionably, St. John of the Cross was an extremely developed spiritual being and unquestionably he himself had passed through the desert, because otherwise he could not speak about it with such compassion.

Now we come back to our koan. What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west? Why is it we are practising? Kyorin says, “Sitting long, getting tired.” What is this passing through the desert? What does it really do? What does it really mean? The desert is an absence of all that interests, of all that appeals, of all that supports, of all that is meaningful, of all that gives value and sense. It is stripping that away. And then what is left?

-

The shell of a cicada,

It sang itself

Utterly away.”

*

Koan 1 of the Mumonkan

A monk once asked Joshu, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" Joshu answered "Mu."

The whole of our practice, indeed the whole of all spiritual practice, is summed up, contained in, Joshu's Mu. Some of you are working on "Who am I?" In exactly the same way, all spiritual practice is in that one question, "Who?" What does this mean? What is spiritual practice? What are we doing when we come here? We must not believe that Joshu's Mu is any kind of technique, any way by which we can manipulate reality to our advantage. Our practice is like a prayer, but again we must understand that we use the word "prayer" not in the way that most people look upon it, a way of persuading, cajoling, demanding, pleading, some power to change the inevitable. Our practice is like a prayer of supplication, a prayer by which we open ourselves to what is.

What is Joshu's Mu? Does a dog have Buddha nature? First you must enter into the monk's question, because if you are seriously practicing Zen, his question is your question. What am I? What does it mean when I say, "I am?" How can we stop taking that I am for granted? How can we stop taking our whole life for granted? This is the basis of koan practice: no longer to use readymade, secondhand ideas and thoughts.

I always ask people why they are coming to practice. Very often people say, "I want to see if I can break out. I want to free myself of the feeling that I've seen it all before." This wish to break out leads people to believe that spiritual practice requires some kind of enthusiasm, excitement, emotional high. But to break out is to examine everything as closely as possible and then to examine the process of examining. What is anything? We are so convinced that we know what we mean when we say that something is -- that the room is here, that the garden is there, that the house is there -- we are so convinced of this that we go beyond it, we ignore the significance of what we've done.

Hui Neng said, "From the beginning, not a thing is." You must see this kind of phrase, as well as a phrase like "true self is no self," as a kind of medicine you take to cure you of the sickness of taking things for granted. Buddha said that his teaching was a raft, then he asked, "When you cross over, do you carry the raft on your head?" We must not look at what Hui Neng says as a teaching, as something that we learn and absorb and take as our own. It is a challenge. We can no more say that from the beginning not a thing is than we can say that things have always been.

This is the beauty of Mu. Mu leaves no residue. It leaves nothing behind. You must practice in just this way. This is why we always say at the beginning of sesshin, "You have not come here to understand." When we try to understand we try to build some kind of edifice, some kind of house in which to live, some kind of structure of ideas that we can be sure of. There is a belief that one can grasp reality in thoughts and words. Many people share this belief, not in any overt, conscious way, but as a tacit assumption. But if you've really worked on yourself, you will see that every idea that you grasp turns to nothing. When you look at it closely it somehow melts. Even the ideas that one felt were so important, one sees they've got no substance to them. This is Mu. Mu is a solvent, like an acid.

When we first start the practice our struggle is to just hold on to Mu, just to keep it in mind, just to stay with it. And when we've done that for a while we begin to wonder, "What is the point of this kind of practice?" and this is when a deeper kind of practice can begin to take over. But one really has to face that question because the switch from just holding on to Mu to looking into Mu is radical. Mu means totally undefined, completely unlocated, completely without borders or limits, indeed, with nothing to hold on to. It's like when we chant from the Prajnaparamita, "and so the Bodhisattva, holding to nothing whatever." But we must be careful because our practice is not "slipping away." That line from the English poet John Keats, "Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget;" this is not what practice is about. You do not have to dissolve; you do not go into some special state, some trancelike state; your ideas must fade, dissolve. And this is only possible in your light; what is important is the clarity and intensity of your light. We sometimes ask, "Are you?" and if one can be completely innocent, completely unsophisticated, naïve, in response to that question, one gets a taste of what we mean when we say that the ideas must dissolve.

There is a saying in Zen, "When thoughts of the world are strong, then thoughts of the dharma are weak; when thoughts of the dharma are strong, then thoughts of the world are weak." Thoughts of the world are so strong because we take things for granted. One of the key words that hold it all in place is the word "is." This is why we warn you, the question, "What is Mu?" or "Who are you?" is a trap. Mu means no "is." Dogen speaks of "uji," beingtime. He says everything is time. The zendo is time, the cushion is time, the house is time. There is a koan, it's what they call a preliminary koan, and it says, "Standing on the bridge and lo, the stream no longer flows, it is the bridge that flows." Because we take everything for granted with the concrete base of "is" we see the world as something static. The world is like a stage on which a play is being enacted. We believe that in the background is the stage, the scenery, all is fixed, unmoving, static; while in the foreground is my life. I move through the world, My life is like a stream flowing while the banks of the stream remain stable. But Dogen says the banks are also flowing. The stage, the scene, is the play. This is not that everything is becoming, we are not saying that at all; there is no becoming. When I am silent it seems that nothing is happening, but everything is happening. Nothing ever stops happening. Everything is happening. To see into this is a way of melting down this carapace, this shell, of what we call existence.

In another koan Hyakujo goes out with Baso, and while they are out some wild geese fly overhead and Baso says to Hyakujo, "Hyakujo, where have they gone?" And Hyakujo says, "They have flown away." Baso grabs Hyakujo by the nose and twists his nose. Why? We believe that things come and go, that I come and go. Because we believe in this notion of time as a stream that is flowing, things appear and disappear. But there is no birth, no death, there is no appearing and disappearing. This is why we say that there is no becoming.

There are no things to appear, and no things to discover there because you put them over there. It’s the same if you look at your body. You can put your body over there, in which case you say “I have a body.” But when you don’t say, “I have a body,” then the body dissolves. One is left simply with sensations, pains perhaps because you are inside, so to say. But when Hui Neng says, “From the beginning, not a thing is,” he is neither inside nor outside. Mu is beyond inside and outside. The whole meaning of the words inside and outside drops away; there is no connection between what you are and anything that you can say to express what you are. No connection at all. When you really see into yourself, then all that you’ve known, understood, realized, just melts like a cloud. Joshu’s Mu means just that.

Our practice must become more subtle. We should not believe that as a consequence of practice we are going to know more or understand more. By subtle, I mean more transparent, that you see through ideas and not with ideas. Someone said it is like throwing a slate into a deep clear pool. If you have ever done that you know the fascination of seeing it sink deeper and deeper. We sometimes liken it to experiencing a piece of music. One can listen to a piece of music many times and at the end one can say, "I think I am beginning to see what that music is about." There is no end to practice. You mustn't look upon practice as some kind of race that you are running, some kind of marathon that you have undertaken, that one day you will run across the finishing line.

When I first heard this I was filled with despair because, above all I wanted closure, wanted a finality, wanted a stop. Our belief in a stop, in a finality, our lusting after closure gives us the impetus for taking things for granted. Our belief in gaining and getting and having and achieving is the manifestation of this need for closure, and of course the ultimate in closure is death. We are in that situation of wanting to find rest and peace, and yet knowing that the last thing that we really want is rest and peace, because to do that we must get outside time. Time knows no rest. We get outside time by thoughts and names, by, if you like, abstraction. So we are able to have this stage on which to put on our play, this ability to get outside time, but when we get outside time we get outside life.

There is a fairy story called The Midas Touch, about a king who wanted wealth, and a wise man came and said "Yes, I can give you wealth. Everything you touch will turn to gold," and the whole world froze solid as a consequence. When we give workshops we often say that Zen is like a smorgasbord, take your pick. This is after we have introduced all the possibilities that Zen practice can give: satisfying curiosity, less physical stress, less psychological stress, more concentration power, creativity, and then we say choose, but choose well because perhaps you will get what you want, but won't want what you get. King Midas got what he wanted, but then he didn't want what he got. For everything to turn to gold means that you achieve what you want, but what is it you want? Joshu's Mu is the opposite to the Midas Touch. There are two ways of being rich; one is to earn or gain a lot of money, the other way is to let go of all unnecessary desires. A man with a million dollars who wants two million dollars is a poor man; a man with nothing who wants nothing is rich. When we talk in terms of riches and poverty, we always think in terms of money, but money is just a symbol of our ability to grasp, our ability to take things for granted.

When your practice becomes more subtle, your life will become richer. But if you are struggling constantly to grasp, to get, to achieve, then naturally your life will become poorer, you will be like a person with a million dollars that wants two million dollars. You know the koan about the monk Seizei, who said to the master "I am poor and destitute. I beg you, give me sustenance." He had a million and he wanted two. And the master pointed this out to him and said, "Seizei!" "Yes sir." "There, you've drunk the finest wine in China and still you say that you are poor." But to see into that requires subtlety, delicacy. You must work with a feather touch. Of course, when we are on sesshin, and after we have sat for several hours, then our practice begins to get very dry and difficult; we can only stay present by using great effort, we can even lose the whole question, we are in a kind of daze, and then we wonder, how can we have a subtle practice in the midst of this?

By not trying to get through it, by not trying to get outside it or over it. By not wanting another experience, something else, something different. Simply because the practice is uncomfortable does not mean that it is a bad practice. Practice requires immense humility, and humility leads to patience; but we say to ourselves, surely something else should be possible now, something else should come; we are always fidgeting for this something else so we are not able to be one with the moment, and being one with the moment is what I mean by being subtle.

Mu is not an alternative viewpoint. Joshu's Mu is beyond all description. As Hakuin says, "beyond exultation." Mu is life. That we want magic and miracles is because echoes of Mu resonate through us. Mumon says, "Hundreds of flowers in the spring, the cool breeze in summer, the moon in autumn, snow in winter," What more do you want?

~ ~ ~

Notes

[1] see Hakuin’s chant in Praise of Zazen

[2] I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Tr. Maurice Frydman. Acorn Press. Durham 1973

About the Author

Albert Low is an internationally published author of many books, including "Zen and Creative Management" which sold 75,000 copies and “Invitation to Practice Zen", which is now in its thirteenth printing. He is currently the Teacher and Director of the Montreal Zen Center where he has over 200 students, many of whom are doctors, psychiatrists and university professors.

Albert Low was a business executive for the first half of his life employed as a senior human resource executive in South Africa and later in Canada. In Canada he was responsible for introducing a new way of company organization and he lectured widely on creativity in management.

He has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Philosophy and was awarded an honorary Doctorate degree by Queen’s University, Ontario for academic achievement and community service.

He has practiced Zen Buddhism intensely for 40 years. In 1976 he retired from the business world to study and teach Zen Buddhism on a full time basis. He spent three years on the staff of the Rochester Zen Center. He has been the teacher and director of the Montreal Zen Center since 1979.

When human resource executive he studied in particular the management theories of the Tavistock Institute and the theories of Elliot Jaques and Lord Wilfred Brown of the Glacier Metal Industry. He is very widely read in Western and Eastern philosophy and psychology and Western science, and has spent many years as a psychological counselor.

He has given many TV and radio broadcasts, has written numerous articles for magazines and, because of this, is well known in Europe, Australia and throughout North America.

Albert Low’s Website: http://www.albertlow.ca

Montreal Zen Center Website: http://www.zenmontreal.ca

Table of Contents

1. Why use koans?

2. Koans Do Not Contain Symbols

3. A Koan Is Not an Exercise or Technique

4. Koans Have No Teaching

5. A Koan Is Not A Mantra

6. Prajnâ: Arouse the Mind Without Resting It Upon Anything

7. Ordinary Mind Is The Way

8. Working On Koans

9. Faith, Doubt and Perseverance

10. Different Kinds of Koans

11. The Essence and the Function

12. The Break through Koans

13. Koan 17 of the Hekiganroku

14. Koan 1 of the Mumonkan

15. Notes

16. About the Author

Why use koans?