For Your Benefit (MK48)

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KOAN:

Two friends were washing their bowls in a creek, and they saw two crows fighting over a frog. One friend asked, “Why does it always have to be like that?”

The other friend replied, “It’s only for your benefit, honored one.”

—PZI Miscellanous Koans, Case 48 (Dongshan)

Text October 12, 2021

Unexpected Gifts: 10,000 Feet Down, The Stone

John Tarrant

Koans

For Your Benefit (MK48), Laozi's True Traveler, Poverty (MK71), Step by Step in the Dark (MK72), Suddenly It's Midnight, Where Do Songs Come From? (MK41)

Category

Text, Transcript

John Tarrant talks about living in an underworld time, in a descent as a culture and as a world, and as a planet. Accepting the descent, and accepting the quality of being lost when it appears, is profoundly important. And there’s a great, strange, and interesting mystery in that.

7566 Words

Article September 8, 2021

Let Me Count the Ways

John Tarrant

Koans

For Your Benefit (MK48)