The Great Way Is Not Difficult

Zhaozhou taught, “’The great way isn’t difficult if you don’t pick and choose.’ As soon as I speak,
you’ll think, ‘That’s picking and choosing,’ or ‘That’s clear.’ But I don’t identify with clarity. Can you live like that?”
A student asked, “If you don’t identify with clarity, what do you live by?”
“I don’t know.”

If only you don't pick & choose

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Text August 14, 2020

Spirit of Love, Joy & Play in Koans

John Tarrant

Koans

Emperor Wu Questions Bodhidharma (BCR1)(BS2), Vast Emptiness, Nothing Holy (BCR1)(BS2), Yanguan's Rhinoceros Fan (BCR91)(BS25), Yunmen’s Medicine and Sickness Cure Each Other (BCR87)

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2014 Summer Sesshin, Blue Cliff Record, Bodhidharma, embodying koans, play, Rhinoceros, sickness and medicine, what am I, Yunmen

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Value a sort of play and see if you can break the koan—the koan will be amused. And see it and let it into your heart, and see what comes, or follow it around, or have it follow you. And finally you’ll realize, “Oh, I’m here. I’m free.”

5546 Words

Audio December 3, 2019

The Consequences of Asking: Who Am I?

John Tarrant

Koans

Avatamsaka Sutra: Indra's Net, Indra’s Net (Sutra), The Land of Demons (EV42), Who Am I?

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2017 January Sesshin, creating a “me", do the opposite, fun, good/bad, identity, improv, play

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Inquiring into being a Me, a Who, a Somebody, into What am I?, I lose ‘myself’ and then ‘Everything is true’! Why doesn’t that awareness stay? More interesting to have fun than to be ‘somebody’, but we cling to that. Asking ‘Who am I?’ has a subversive quality: it undoes the world you’re in, your identity. Then the radiance of the universe comes towards you, you’re drenched with the universe, because you’re not in the way.

47' 27"