REGISTER

Just don’t seek from others or you’ll be far estranged from yourself.
Now I go on alone, but everywhere I meet it. It now is me; I now am not it.
One must understand in this way to merge with suchness.

 — from the Record of Dongshan

So far, what has grabbed my attention is the irony of Dongshan saying we shouldn’t seek from others, and then telling us what we must do to understand suchness. Don’t I risk being estranged from myself if I listen to what he tells me? It reminds me of Zhaozhou being accused of picking and choosing by a student when he said, “The great way is not difficult, it just avoids picking and choosing.” Zhaozhou’s response was that he did not abide in clarity. 

Having a relationship with a koan requires us to find our place in the koan. To become intimate with a koan is to become intimate with everything and everyone in the koan. 

So, in the case of this koan, as I become more and more intimate with Dongshan, my feeling of “otherness” in relation to Dongshan diminishes until there is none. There is no other, and so no possibility of estrangement from myself. One feature of an awakening experience is the sense of remembering something that I didn’t know I had forgotten. It is something we all have, remember?

Join us for a koan, meditation, dharma talk, & conversation.
All are welcome. Register to participate.

—David