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The Simplest Koan [1]
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Date: 2023-12-03
“Where does the path to awakening begin?”—“Right here.” In different versions of this koan, the master draws a line on the ground or in the air. Never mind that. It is obviously right where you are that you start. Just take a step forward. Ah, but how to take that step? If you put a foot over the line, you have lost your way before you started.
As Bellatrix says about the killing curse to Harry Potter,
You have to mean it.
And when Harry went to let Voldemort kill him, he had to mean that, too.
GAKUD Ō -Y Ō JINSH Ū
IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF ZAZEN
1. Necessity for a Desire for the Way.
Although there are many names given to that which seeks the Way they all refer to the one, and same, Mind. Nagyaarajyuna said, “The universality of change, the arising and disappearing, when completely understood, is the seeing into the heart of all things, and the Mind that thus understands is the Mind that truly seeks the Way.” As this is so, why is temporary dependence upon the ordinary mind of man called the Mind that seeks the Way? If one sees through the changeability of the universe, the ordinary, selfish mind is not in use; that which seeks for the sake of itself is nowhere to be found.
IOW, the mind that seeks the way is a good start, which is what we were looking for.
Now let’s take a look at the koan itself, in versions set down by Masters Mumon and Dogen.
Yuezhou’s “Path to Nirvana”
Yuezhou Qianfeng was once asked by a monastic Bhagavans in the ten directions have one path to the gate of Nirvana. I wonder what is that path. Yuezhou drew a line with his staff and said It’s right here.
The True Dharma Eye, Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans, with commentary by John Daido Lori.
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