PZI Teacher Archives
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Allison Atwill -
David Parks -
David Weinstein -
Eduardo Fuentes -
Jesse Cardin -
John Tarrant -
Jon Joseph -
Michelle Riddle -
Tess Beasley
Yunmen's East Mountain Walks on the Water (EV49)
KOAN:
A monk asked Yunmen, “Where do all the Buddhas come from?”
Yunmen said, “The East Mountain walks on the water.”
—Entangling Vines, Case 49
Note: Yuanwu gave Yunmen’s koan to his student Dahui, who was struggling to break through.
Falling with the Koan NO
John Tarrant gives a talk on Zhaozhou’s NO: This koan is often offered as a first “gate,” but I think you need to already be in trouble and falling before it’s useful. Life is always offering us that cliff—that door of falling. When you’re falling, you can’t screw it up because actually there’s not a lot you can do. But what you do will be very free and won’t be constrained by the usual. From a recording made in Fall Sesshin 2022.
Dharma Theme: In the Wild – Mountain Koans & Poems
PZI Teachers
Eventually you come to a place where you can’t go on and you can’t go back. You have arrived at the base of cliffs; you can’t scale them, you can’t get around them, and there’s no handy tunnel through them. It’s a daunting place—that’s the point of it. And when you arrive here your life and your journey can become your own.
A Koan Story – East Mountain Walks on Water
John Tarrant tells a long koan story of awakening: The East Mountain Walks on Water. Recorded during Sunday Zen on December 18, 2022: The Transformations in Things. 36 minutes.
The Transformation in Things
Complete Sunday Zen session recorded on December 18, 2022. Music from Jordan McConnell.
The Transformations in Things
In the darkest days of the year, we tend toward year’s end assessments as a kind of emptying of heart and mind before the new year. John Tarrant tells a shaggy-dog transformation tale beginning with the koan, “Where do all the Buddhas come from? East Mountain walks on water.” There is a strange journey, a fox, carp, tiger, dragon’s cave, and a meeting with the Buddha. When we are free in the current matter, it is easier to love others, and our hearts flow out and touch each other.
Fall Sesshin 2022: Dahui’s Journey, Bodhidharma’s Response, & the Marvelous Duke
Sesshin is an embrace which allows greater freedom to appear, and it is deeply mysterious. We don’t do it for a particular outcome or we would be constraining ourselves. We are free and easy wandering. In the koan, Emperor Wu wants a method and a first principle of the holy teaching. Bodhidharma answers, There isn’t a principle! You can’t confine it. Chan is trusting uncertainty, it is not something to be believed. Vows from Amanda Boughton, closing words from Tess Beasley. Complete session recorded on October 7, 2022.
The East Mountain Walks on the Water
Brilliant Zen student Dahui’s teacher, Yuanwu, sees his student can’t quite let go of his hold of the precipice and gives him this koan. There is something underneath everything: it is vastness. The old character was ‘sky.’ Haiku was hailed as a perfect snapshot with eternity in it. Haiku from John Tarrant, Masaoka Shiki, and others. Complete session recorded February 13, 2022.