SESSHIN TEISHO
                       John Tarrant Roshi
                        February 6, 1993
                    Camp Cazadero, California

                       WORKING WITH KOANS


Today's talk is about working with koans.  I'll begin with the
text of two koans.
     A pilgrim of the way asked Chao-chou:  Does a dog have
     Buddha nature or not?

     Chao-chou said:  Mu.

The other koan is

     Who is hearing that sound?

Please sit comfortably.


The koan tradition began in China as an organic response to the
problems of trying to understand reality.  What happened was
people would meditate and go about their business during the day
and then in the evening sometimes the teacher would give a talk
or take questions, or students would question each other or they
would read.  Questions would arise and answers would be given. 
Some answers seemed more interesting than others and gradually
these became known as public cases just like common law cases
would help resolve doubts about, in this case, inner conflicts. 
One of the very first ones for this to happen with was the koan
`Mu'.  

For example, Huang-po (??) the teacher of Lin-chi, who is usually
thought of as the founder of the koan tradition.  He died in 850
of our era.  Here are his instructions on doing the work.  I'll
just read you a little bit from it.  These instructions are quite
old--1100 years maybe.
     If you have been unable to penetrate through, I guarantee
     you that when the last day of your life arrives, you will be
     frantic.

Nice to have some things be certain, isn't it?

     When you are suddenly facing the end of life, what will you
     use to fend off birth and death?  Don't wait til you are
     thirsty to dig the well.  If you neglect to do the work,
     then when the end approaches your limbs will not be properly
     arranged, the road ahead will be vague and you will whirl
     about in confusion bumping into things.  How painful.

     I urge you all to take advantage of the period when you are
     physically strong to seek and find clear insight.  This key
     link is very easy.  It is just that you must mobilize your
     will to the utmost to do it.  

It's not enough to say over and over again how hard it is.  

     If you are for real, you will contemplate the public cases
     (koans).  For example, 

          A pilgrim asked Chao-chou:  Does a dog have buddha
          nature or not?

          Chao-chou said:  Mu.

     Contemplate this word Mu twenty-four hours a day.  Study it
     from morning to night.  Mobilize your energy and hold onto
     this word `Mu' continuously from mind moment to mind moment.

You know what he means about a mind moment.  How quick (snaps
fingers) one follows the other, doesn't it?  Carries us away.
     Whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down;
     whether you are dressing or eating or going to the toilet,
     after long days and years you will achieve unity. 
     Unexpectedly the mind flower will bloom and you will awaken
     to the devices of the buddhas and ancestors.  After this you
     will be able to open your big mouth and say things like,
     `Bodhidharma's coming from the west' thus creating waves
     with no wind.

     When the world-honored one held up a flower to start the zen
     tradition, it was a defeat.  When you reach this point, not
     only the Lord of the Dead but even a thousand sages will
     have no way to deal with you.

So, you can see that very, very early people began working with
koans almost as soon as they were made.  Huang-po and Chao-chou
were pretty close in time, actually.  I can't quite remember
Chao-chou's dates, but he lived so long, 120 years, he lived
through many eras of zen.  This must have been just after Chao-
chou said this Huang-po is using it already as a device to help
his students.

When people give accounts of their personal experience, we find
something rather like what many of us did before it was easy to
find teaching in the west.  People would read or hear about
something a teacher had said and they would take it up for
themselves.  One student started out with the koan `Mu' and after
awhile he felt he couldn't get anywhere further with it so he
took up the koan of Yun-men.
     What is buddha?
     Yun-men said:  Dried shit stick.
Which is rather like `Mu' in that it gives you an answer that is
not quite expected.  Mu literally means, no, and when the student
asked Chao-chou, "Does a dog have buddha nature or not?" in some
deep layer of himself he probably expected the answer, yes,
because that's what everybody says that the Great Buddha dharma,
when you penetrate it, reveals that everything has buddha nature
even the stones.  But the monk, of course, couldn't see this.  So
when Yun-men said, "dried shit stick" probably this was not what
the monk was expecting.  But he wasn't just being crude either. 
He was confronting the student with something to chew on. 
Horrible pun.

The great masters always tended to take the question and do
something with it so that it was presented back in another form.
but it had somehow shifted.  Yun-men was famous for doing this
and so was Chao-chou.  The question is delivered back to you so
that you are empowered to work with it yourself.  

Here is another teacher.  This is a thirteenth century teacher,
Hua-yan Zu-kin (???) talking about his own student days.
     At first I contemplated the word Mu.  When a thought
     suddenly arose, I would look back on it and the thought
     would immediately freeze.  I became clear all the way
     through, unmoving and unwavering.  A whole day would pass
     like a snap (snaps finger) of the fingers.  I did not hear
     the sounds of the bell and the drum at all.

     When I was nineteen I settled at Ling-yuan (???) Temple. 
     Here I met a secretary who had come from the city of Chu-zo
     (???).  

     He said to me:  Kin, your meditation work is stagnant and
     doesn't accomplish anything.  To study zen one must arouse
     the sentiment of doubt.  From a small doubt there is small
     awakening; from a great doubt, great awakening.

So the doubt is all the struggles and struggles that come to us
day by day.  It's all the confusion and fog; all the suffering
and disturbance.  This arises, the old teachers felt from the
fact that our minds are not yet clear.  It could all be called
doubt.  They advised us to gather all this together and give it
to the koan.  That's what the koan is.  It's the gathering of all
the confusion, all the suffering, all the sorrow, everything we
cling to is gathered up into the koan and that way everything can
be resolved.  Everything you keep out of the koan and don't
gather into the koan will have to be resolved later by another
koan.

     After the secretary criticized me I changed my koan and
     contemplated the saying, `What is buddha?'  `A dried shit
     stick.'  I went on consistently doubting and doubting up and
     down and back and forth.  When I was assailed by oblivion
     and scattering, 

I think we know what oblivion is.  That's that very dull place
that we spend so much time in.  It can be anything from just
tiredness to watching TV, to having somebody talk to you and just
drift as they do.
     and scattering, when your mind fragments into a thousand
     pieces.  In a short time I could cleanse these conditions
     away but I could not succeed.  Then I moved to Pure
     Compassion Temple and formed a group with seven of my
     friends to do sitting meditation.  We pledged ourselves not
     to lie down.  There was an advanced student called Tzu (sp
     ???) who sat every day like an iron rod.  When he walked
     around, he opened his eyes and hung his arms down, but he
     was still like an iron rod.  I wanted to approach him and
     talk to him, but I could not.

And so he goes on working really hard.  Eventually he ran into
Tzu again and he managed to ask him after two years, finally he
could manage to get a question out.  He bumped into him.
     Tzu said:  What are you doing here?

     He said:  Walking (working???) on the path.

     Tzu said:  What do you call the path?

     I could not answer and felt confused and depressed.  I was
     about to return to the hall and sit in meditation when I met
     the head student.  

     He told me:  Open your eyes wide and observe what truth it
     is.

     Suddenly, then I wanted to go back to the meditation hall.

So he reports how quickly the mind changes, doesn't it?  From
confusion, to longing to understand, to sleepiness, to ignorance. 
Over years it just changes back and forth like this.
     But as soon as I sat on the meditation cushion what was
     before my eyes emptied out and opened up like the ground
     falling away.  I could not explain what it was like.  It was
     not something that could be described.  

Wu-men says, "At a certain stage you are like a dumb person who
has had a dream and you know it for yourself alone."  

     When I walked out I saw Tzu and saw me and instantly
     recognized my state.

     He said:  How happy you are.  How happy I am for you.  

     He took me by the hand and we walked around the willowy
     embankment in front of the temple gate.  I looked up and
     down between the sky and the earth and I saw the whole dense
     array of myriad images.  All that my eyes saw and my ears
     heard.  All things that I had previously felt disgusted with
     and tried to abandon.  All this was actually flowing forth
     from my own wondrous, illuminated true nature.

This was his first opening.

     Whenever I went to sleep my realization broke into two. 
     Koans that had an obvious meaning I could understand, but
     those that were like silver mountains or an iron wall, I did
     not understand.  

     So I went on like this, blocked within my breast, for ten
     more years.  One day I was walking in the Buddha's shrine at
     Tian-mu (sp???) Temple when I glanced up and saw an ancient
     pine tree.  As soon as my eyes made contact with it, insight
     came forth and the enlightenment that I had previously
     attained and been attached to tumbled down and disappeared. 
     It was like going from a dark room into the bright sunlight. 
     After this I finally saw the meaning of the saying, "Right
     where you stand you deserve thirty blows."


Another teacher of the same general era, late thirteenth century
teacher, said
     I was fifteen when I left home.  At twenty I became a monk
     and entered the Pure Compassion Temple.  I set myself a firm
     three year limit to learn zen.


I kind of like this.  There's another story of a student who came
to his teacher and said, 

     I really want to learn zen.  

     The teacher said:  You must do this for ten years.  You must
     just sit as if you are an ancient pine tree in the forest. 
     Every moment bring your attention back to your koan.

     The student said:  Ten years is far too long.  I'm in a
     great hurry.  How long will it take if I really work hard.

     The teacher said:  Oh, then it should be twenty years.

So he decided he had a three year limit to learn zen.  I
recognize this person even though he lived in the thirteenth
century.  Sounds familiar.
     I studied with a master at Broken Bridge who directed me to
     come to grips with the koan `Where do we come from when we
     are born and where do we go when we die?'

A famous puzzling and mysterious question.

     So I studied this for some time and my thinking always
     divided into these two roots and I could not attain any kind
     of unity.  Later I met the master Zway-ya Zu-kin (???) who
     told me to contemplate the word `Mu.'  He also directed me
     to come up to him every day like someone on a journey who
     wants to check his progress every day.  Thus I saw that
     there was a systematic order in what he said.  Later on when
     I came to his room, he stopped asking me about my practice,
     but as soon as I came in the door he asked me:

     Who is hauling this dead body in here for you?

     Then, before he had finished asking his question he hit me
     and drove me out.

     Subsequently, I went back to the zendo.  In a dream I
     suddenly recalled the koan `All things return to the one. 
     Where does the one return to?'  At this the feeling of doubt
     suddenly came forth and I no longer kept track of where I
     was.

     On the sixth day after this I went along with a group of
     students into a room to recite sutras.  I raised my head and
     suddenly saw a portrait of the master Wu-tsu Fa-yen.  The
     portrait had an inscription and the last two lines read:

          One hundred years, thirty-six thousand mornings going
          back and forth;
          All along it was this sky (???).    

     Suddenly I broke through the saying from the day before
     about hauling the dead body.  My soul flew up and my guts
     dropped out.  After annihilation came rebirth.  It was like
     putting down a load of a hundred pounds.  When this happened
     I was exactly twenty-four years old.  I had fulfilled the
     three year limit that I had set.

     After this I was questioned by the master. 

     He said:  Can you act the master in the midst of your busy, 
     everyday life?

     I answered that I could.

     He asked:  Can you act the master in your dreams?

     I answered that I could.

     Where are you in the dreamless sleep?  Where is the master
     then?

     There was nothing I could say in reply to this.

     So the master instructed me:  From now on I don't want you
     to study the dharma or investigate the sayings.  Just eat
     when you're hungry and sleep when you're tired and as soon
     as you awaken from sleep mobilize your spirit and ponder
     this question.  Ultimately, where does the master of this
     wakefulness of mine put his body and his life?

     I swore to stake my whole life on this.  I would act
     oblivious of everything else determined to see clearly into
     the issue.

     Five years passed.  One morning I woke in doubt over the
     issue.  The companion in the path, that I was sharing
     lodgings with, unexpectedly pushed his (wooden) pillow and
     it fell to the ground making a sound.  Suddenly the massive
     doubt smashed.  It was like leaping out of a net.  I
     completely understood all the inexplicable koans, all the
     ancient and modern stories.  From then on the land was
     secure and the state firmly established.  Everything under
     heaven enjoyed great peace.

So you can see how he struggled to and fro.  The main thing he
did was he really wanted the way.  He had the desire for the way
in him so that everything he did, even his errors, served to help
him.  And you can see that he moved from time to time trying the
practice in different ways.  But he didn't have any special
skill, really.  He was kind of clumsy.  He didn't develop any
special techniques.  He just really threw his heart into it and
that's what counts most.  

The koan `Ultimately where does the master of this wakefulness
put his body and his life?'  `Where does the master of this
wakefulness put her body and her life?'  That's the same koan as
`Who is the one who is hearing that sound?'  Who is the master of
hearing, of feeling, of walking about?  Who is it who was
existing before you were born and continues after you die?

Thursday I went into one of the zendos in the city to see Zenshin
Philip Whalen, who has had congestive heart failure.  Everybody
who knows him wants him to have open heart surgery because they
want him around.  He will be seventy at the end of this year. 
He's not sure whether he needs him around or not still.  So he's
got this decision to make about whether to just go ahead and die
now, or have heart surgery and die in a few more years.  For a
zen person this is a real decision.  One doesn't just
automatically make decisions that other people want us to make. 
Is it the time to go on?  We talked this through and one of the
things that came up was, what question is important to you to
decide this matter?  The koan question is, is there some dharma
work that still needs to be done by him?  Is there some teaching
that he still needs to do?  Somebody that he can still serve and
help in the way.  That would make some point for having open
heart surgery.  I guess by now he will have decided one way or
the other.

So you can see that these are real matters.  These are matters
that you need to, in some way, take your stand in life before you
get old and sick.  This is what the koan study is about.  That we
don't just drift along in our lives.  We find a place to really
stand.  We find a place so that when we sit down, we are sitting
in the center of the earth.  When we can sit there, then we will
not be frightened of the things that rise up whether it is death
or sorrow.  Joy will not carry us off our feet either and make us
do stupid things.  It will just be joy.

As you know, Wu-men gave very similar advice.  
     He said:  The great way has no gate.  There are a thousand
     different paths.  Once you pass through the barrier you walk
     the universe alone.

When I was studying in Australia, I didn't have a teacher.  I had
to make everything up.  So I took up the koan `Mu'.  All I could
do was decide that I would just hold onto it in any
circumstances.  Kind of like a small terrier clinging to an
elephant.  I'm not always sure that the elephant even knew that I
was holding onto its tail.  I was flung about.  That was what I
could do.  I could meditate and hold the koan.  Sometimes I would
be completely sleeping and sometimes it would seem rather clear
and everything would seem exciting and clear.  Then the next day
it would shatter again.  Then another koan I would read or
somebody would talk to me and it would come to me and I would
take up that.  I took up the one, `What is the sound of a single
hand?'  `You know what the sound of two hands is.  What is the
sound of a single hand?'  I remember taking that up.  I was going
into surgery and I was going under general anesthetic and I had
the idea it would be good to take a very strong koan.  So I
grabbed that koan.  I remember going down in the anesthetic
going, `What is the sound of a single hand?'  As I came back out
of the anesthetic, `What is the sound of a single hand?' hours
later after the surgery.  I was still no closer to knowing. 
Nevertheless, that surgery went very well.

Then later when I came to my teacher, he gave me `Mu' again and I
worked on that.  Then I went to another teacher before I had
resolved `Mu' and he gave me another koan.  It's another story
about Chao-chou.
     Chao-chou went to see a hermit and said:  Is anybody in?
     anybody in?

     The hermit just held up a fist.

     Chao-chou said:  The water here is too shallow for a ship to
     anchor.  

     And left.

     Then he went to a hermit again and said:  Is anybody in?
     anybody in?

     This hermit lifted up a fist.

A big presentation of the way.

     Chao-chou said:  Freely you give.  Freely you take away. 
     Freely you kill and freely you bestow life.

     With this he made a full bow.

And this other teacher asked me, "What is the difference between
those two hermits?"  Chao-chou praised one and he blamed another
and they only held up a fist.  So I meditated with that and it
seemed like I broke through something.  Then I went back to my
teacher very excited and he said, "What is Mu?"  And I still
couldn't show him.

We just walk along and the way does go on and on and on.  I think
that is a very good thing.  Another teacher from the fourteenth
century called Zong-feng Ming-ben (sp???) talks about doing
meditation when you're sick.
     It is not necessary for you to be energetic and vigorous. 
     It is not necessary for you to open your eyes wide and
     stare.  All that is necessary is for your mind to be still
     like wood or stone and your thoughts to be like cold ashes
     in a fireplace.  Take the illusory body composed of all the
     elements and cast it off beyond the world.  If you follow
     this, you will succeed even if you are sick.  You will
     succeed even if you die.  You will succeed if someone is
     watching you and if no one is watching you.  You will
     succeed whether you are fragrant and fresh or whether you
     stink and your flesh is rotting.  You will succeed if you
     are cured and regain your health and live to be a hundred
     and twenty (like Chao-chou did).  You will succeed if you
     die and are dragged off to the torments of hell by your past
     deeds.  


In any circumstances.  So you do not need to wonder how you will
be when you die.  People, when they are sick, particularly if
they're dying, often worry a lot about--I have a friend, who was
talking recently to me, "What if I get dementia?  What if I can't
even compose my thoughts at the end?  What if I have a stroke and
am babbling?  Won't that be inconvenient?  Terrifying?  As this
teacher points out, "I know that if you have really settled
matters in your heart, in any condition the diamond will be
there."  We call our group the California Diamond Sangha and the
word comes from the "Diamond Sutra", which is truly the "Diamond-
cutter's Sutra."  Everyone knows that we use diamonds to cut
things that cannot be cut by other means.  It's such a hard
substance.  The "Diamond-cutter's Sutra" is the wisdom that is
harder than diamonds and cuts diamonds.  So you'll have that
wisdom and it cuts through all conditions.  It cuts through
illness.  It cuts through suffering.  It cuts through grief, and
you will find that there is a place beyond joy and sorrow, that
is eternally living.

I love that, `Even if you die and are dragged off to the torments
of hell, you will succeed in any condition.'  Some of my favorite
icons are those tantric ones that show the torments of hell and
suffering.  We all know that the torments of hell happen here in
this life.  They happen in Bosnia; they happen in Oakland; they
happen in Santa Rosa; they happen in Somalia.  Those paintings
that show hell, there's a little bodhisattva sitting there with a
red face and horns and fangs smiling in meditation quite happy in
the flames of hell.  You will find that when you truly hold your
meditation it becomes like that.  Something sweeps up and over
you.

At one stage in my meditation I used to notice that when I was
teaching, I would get very serene and everything would be fine. 
I would think all the students were wonderful and everyone was
enlightened.  Then somebody would do something wrong and this
rage and confusion would rise up suddenly and sweep me away.  And
then it would be gone.  I realized that I had to meditate on this
rage and confusion that came up within me and that it was like
one of those hell realms that would come over me.  I was attached
to everyone doing well and getting enlightened.  I had to let go
of that, too.

You will find that even when confusion arises, even when fear or
paranoia overtakes you and grief overtakes you, you can go into
the midst of that fire and then you will find the thing that cuts
diamonds.  Just raise up your meditation at that moment.  You
don't need to struggle.  It doesn't need to be something separate
from you.  Don't hang onto it as something that if only you'll
get tense enough, you'll get there.  Your body can be completely
relaxed and at peace.  You are sitting in the wide fields of the
dharma, the green fields of the dharma, full of flowers.  In that
way your koan holds you.  Let your koan hold you, you might say. 
You don't need to struggle for it.  That means it's you here and
the koan out there, holding onto the tail of an elephant like I
was.  You're too close to the elephant's feet and the elephant's
ass.  You must become one with that koan and the koan will hold
onto you then.  You will ride the elephant very peacefully and
serenely.

Whatever comes up comes up for you; whatever comes from your
life; whatever is presented by the circumstances of sesshin;
whatever comes up in your job in sesshin; whatever suffering
arises for you; whether you feel like you can do your job well or
not; whether you feel like you should be working now or not; 
whether you are longing to be back in the meditation hall;
whether you are in the meditation hall and longing for the bell
to go so that your legs will stop hurting, all these things arise
and fall away.  They are the visions of a dream really.  All you
have to do is become one with that koan and you will find that
there is your field of flowers blooming eternally.  There is your
great peace shining in all directions and in you the compassion
to help others.  The love of the way will arise so deeply and
spontaneously and it will carry you through all circumstances of
your life no matter what comes to you.

Please keep it up.  Meditate sincerely and enjoy the sweetness of
it.

Thank you.