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…koans that I had been working on – 25:00 all those venomous catspores ?? that I had been working on were now penetrated completely – right to their roots they…

…you truly love, and must do. Another way to think of working with a koan is that it’s like going on a date. You have to pay attention, bring flowers,…

…that time was to teach only koans and nothing but koans and to develop new ways of teaching them, ways that might fit Western culture. Along those lines many possibilities…

…real terrain is the vastness, and the strip of white silk. Working with koans David Weinstein, this morning gave a talk about his koan path through the Miscellaneous Koans. And…

…You’ll notice that the issue of improbability is often there, because imagination gets into the koans. And the issue of there being something disturbing is often valuable in the koans….

…eye, a kind of movement in the corner of my eye, and I just ignored it, because I was working. So I was working, working, then I see it again….

And so, I would like to say a couple of things about the Heart Sutra in the context of its relationship to koans and what koans are, and pursue that…

…gifts that might come. So that would be one thing. And that sense that with a koan you’re actually in a relationship, then – you know koans were first marketed…

…futuristic Japanese sort of design. And in a way, I think I couldn’t conceive of things not being a gadget for my mind when I first started koans. So I…

…say about koans… there’s a way in which certain koans come into you, seem to come into you, and then they do things to you that you hadn’t necessarily agreed…

…with what’s interesting about koans, why we use koans. Koans are the form that came originally out of conversation and poetry, where people would ask a teacher—well, they’d ask them…

…koans, which is one of the most reliable ways of going deep. This I discuss koans fairly extensively elsewhere, including on this site in Working With Koans, A Koan Starter…

…and interesting mystery in that, in spiritual paths. I’m working on a new book on koans and the path, and one of the things I’m noticing is that the predicament…

…to walk through your life. Koans are often given in one on one situations; I learned them that way. This course is a Zen 2.0 experiment in working with koans…

…old Chinese poet, and koans and poems were always, poems, koans, koans, poems, they’re always somewhat intertwined in their history. And so often poems were used as koans and vice…

Listen to original audio John: Here we are in the middle of sesshin, and—and what? It’s grand. Even without words, it’s grand. So we’re working with this old poem, an…

…thing. There was a great collection that later became known as “koans to open the body of reality,” or dharmakaya koans. So this is often called the first gate, but…

…a roll call, actually, of the great masters, and also of different types of koans. The first koan that comes is a fundamental koan—an inquiry koan. What is Buddha? Who…

…lot of jokes around it. Hakuin, the great medieval Japanese master, he thought there were eight koans that were extremely difficult to pass through—hard to pass through koans—and he kind…

…tangled. So, you know, we’re always working it out. In all these ways, we’re working it out. What is the explanation? What will happen if…? And that can be so…

John: Tonight I’d like to show a completely different approach to koans. I’ll do it by reading a story that most of you are familiar with. Yesterday we talked about…

Listen to the Original Audio John: So, today we are working with a great old poem, The darkness is inside the bright, but don’t look only with the eyes of…

…I of all beings, would be outside of the mystery. I’m pretty special actually! Only I don’t have Buddha nature. So this guy is working away, he ‘s working in…

…is probably, if you’re going to look for a father of koans, if you’re going to settle on one person, he might be it. And he’s this – I’ve had…

…I went to study koans in Hawaii, and I lived in a temple for a few years. I realized—all the time, I’d been trying to find what I was finding…