Spring Koan Series with Sarah Bender, Roshi
Saturdays, March 20, 27, April 3, 10, 17 and 24, 2021
4:00 PM MDT
All are welcome!
To join the email list and have the weekly selections sent to you,
please contact Sarah Bender, Roshi at sembender@gmail.com
Welcome to the beginning of our Spring Koan Meditation Series. Each week Sarah Bender, Roshi will select a koan or poem from our practice period booklet, which can be found here https://www.smszen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Practice-Period-Booklet.pdf and bring along a companion koan for us to spend time with.
When we meet each week for a series like this, something happens: our dreams and reflections begin to flow together like strands of a stream, and in a way we begin to speak in a language that is its own thing: the shared language of this particular inquiry. An alchemy of minds.
This week’s selections:
This week we’ll begin with the poem that launched our inquiry and permeated the meditations of the Open Source Spring retreat of this past week.
Surprisingly and unsurprisingly, it will appear as a new companion both to those who attended and those who didn’t attend the retreat. That is how koans are.
Old Creek
Muso Soseki
English version by Nelson Foster and Josh Shoemaker
Since before anyone remembers
it has been clear
shining like silver
though the moonlight penetrates it
and the wind ruffles it
no trace of either remains
Today I would not dare
to expound the secret
of the stream bed
But I can tell you
that the blue dragon
is coiled there.
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And this koan came up, appearing now and again like a ball tossed from one conversation and landing in another, so it’s making it’s arc path to you now for this Saturday:
Zhaozhou and an Infant’s Sixth Sense
Blue Cliff Record, Case 80 (trans. by Joan Sutherland and John Tarrant)
A student asked Zhaozhou, “Does a newborn baby have consciousness?
Zhaozhou said, “Tossing a ball on rushing waters.”
The student went on to ask Touzi, “what does ‘tossing a ball on rushing waters’ mean?”
Touzi said, “Moment after moment, it never stops flowing.”
Note: Literally, the sixth sense, which is consciousness (the first five are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch). Yuanwu quotes master Shando: “Among the sixteen contemplation practices, the baby’s practice is the best. When she’s babbling she symbolizes the person studying the Way, with her detachment from the discriminating mind that grasps and rejects.”
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