inquiry and koans-- one old lady's take

and this:

Mu

-- Not ‘yes or no’?

Not.

NO is perfect,
edge-on,
the thinnest blade.

Should YES,
with its tousled
thousand petals,
explode into sight—
well and good!

But NO,
first.
© Kate Gowen 1/25/2006

It's so totally weird and wonderful when the next time I pick up a book I've been reading (in this case, Dawn Light) and find that my preoccupations, about an ostensibly completely different subject, are part of the author's exposition...

"Japanese also has many names for beauty. One feels aware' while appreciating the ephemeral, say the transient beauty of decay in the luminous green moss spreading over rotting trees, the mushrooms and toadstools rising from the rich soil, the patches of brilliant gold and red lichen. After a bird has flown, one may feel yoin, silent reverberations that remain... One may also experience the poignant beauty known as yugen, described in this way by thirteenth-century author Kamo no Chomei... 'It is like an autumn evening under a colorless expanse of silent sky. Somehow, as if for some reason that we should be able to recall, tears well uncontrollably.' Or: 'When looking at autumn mountains through mist, the view may be indistinct yet have great depth. Although few autumn leaves may be visible through the mist, the view is alluring. The limitless vista created in imagination far surpasses anything one can see more clearly.'
....we're connected to every other life-form on Earth in a skein of interrelated victories of fire, including rust. The universe is most likely littered with planets as rusty as our own. Are they florid with life? If so, how well, and how long, have their life-forms survived?

The question almost qualifies as a koan. Koans are capsules of thought, psychic knots that resist unraveling. In some Buddhist sects, students are assigned phrases or situations to meditate upon, to focus the mid and free it from the bear trap of reason...

Inexhaustible, koans are intended for live practice between master and student, with illumination as a goal, not interpretation... As Zen teacher Norman Fischer explains: 'This practice consists of living with and sitting with phrases, until they become very large and very strange, and reveal themselves to us. That is to say, through them we are revealed to ourselves.' ..."

In my meandering acknowledgements of various teachers, I don't think I've been sufficiently loud and persistent in praising John Tarrant Roshi's invariably humane, literate, insightful writing about koan practice. For instance:

" Gateways to the larger life are usually to be found where I don’t look, otherwise I would be walking through them already. I like to imagine these openings as concealed, written in runes visible only by moonlight, but they are often in plain sight guarded merely by No Trespassing signs. The signs don’t say “Avoid this Place’; they say ‘Forget that you noticed this place, these are not the droids you are looking for’.

Fear is one of the gateways. At one moment there is a conventional landscape, with copy machines, convenience stores and parking garages, and suddenly, fear! Nobody voluntarily drops in for a chat with fear, we are just tossed against it, then it is outside us and inside us. Dread twists like an alien invader in our flesh; we sweat, we shiver, our teeth chatter, we’re scared for our survival, sometimes we are almost willing to die to get it over with. "

-- found on his koan blog:

zenosaurus.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-zeno...n-koans-32-when.html

The guy writes beautifully! Stunning stuff. Never heard of him before.