November 20, 2014:
KOAN FOR SUNDAY, NOV. 23, 3 TO 5 PM
Dear Friends,
This week’s koan is a bit longer. It’s from The Sayings of Layman Pang, a text I’ll be taking up with you in depth in February and March. So here’s a taste of Layman Pang.
DIALOGUE WITH A MEDITATION TEACHER
The Layman dropped in at a temple where a priest was giving a public lecture on the Diamond Sutra. When the priest came to the part that says “There is no I and there is no other,” the Layman asked the priest, “About the part that says, ‘There is no I and there is no other,’ who then is lecturing now and who is listening to it?”
The priest did not reply, so the Layman said, “I am only a layperson, but I have a rough idea about the teaching involved.”
The priest said, “So what are the Layman’s thoughts about it?”
The Layman then composed a verse:
“There is no I and there is no other.”
How can there be intimacy or estrangement?
I recommend giving up trying to get there by meditation.
But rather, directly seizing the reality at hand.
The message of the Diamond Sutra is:
Nothing is excluded from our experienced world.
From beginning to end,
It inevitably exposes our false identities.
Upon hearing this verse, the priest was delighted and expressed his gratitude.
And here’s a selection from Acequias and Gates:
One of the intriguing things we’re discovering is that the koans help create a strong peer culture, a kind of horizontal axis to meet the vertical axis of tradition and transmission. Our conversations also help build a sense of a koan way we’re walking together, a kind of common culture. In fact, we see ourselves as creating a culture together rather than building an institution. When the koan salon started meeting, people commented that it was as though we were learning a foreign language together—for a country that was slowly revealing itself to us as we learned to speak its native tongue.
Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday,
Sarah and Andrew