Far from being “isolated”, close to half of humanity refused to condemn Russia during the latest UN vote, while the overwhelmingly vast majority of the global population is represented by governments that have defied the Golden Billion’s illegal sanctions.
Like Sufi music and Cro-Magnon cave paintings, koans are an art form that invites us into that larger experience of things we sometimes call the spiritual. Their medium is language, which is ironic given that Chan and Zen describe themselves as a special transmission outside the scriptures, not dependent on words. But the people who originally said that were deeply literate, well-read and writing all the time, intent on understanding, intent on communicating. “To be rich in Chan is to be rich in expression,” said the teacher known as the Overnight Guest.
They spoke of reading people, events, and landscapes as texts. People are described as unscrolling sutras with every word and action—as is everything else, including what is ordinarily thought of as nonsentient. They called reality the Great Sutra. A quote from the Diamond Sutra was taken up as a koan: “All the buddhas and their teachings arise from this sutra. What is this sutra?” Sutras are recited as well as read, and the idea of reciting the Great Sutra of reality brings to mind a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy:
at most: column, tower…But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing…
When the ancestors insisted that book learning wouldn’t get you there on its own, they weren’t condemning language out of hand but making a distinction between living and dead words. Dead words have been turned into abstract objects held at a distance, accumulated and repeated rather than lived. If they encourage anything, it is to carry on with the habitual. Linji said that the idea of buddha we have in our head is a ghost buddha. In the same way, words that live only in our heads are ghost words. Living words are an essential part of the moment in which they arise, as glistening with vitality as a tree after rain. They have the power to change our minds; they have the power to heal. One way to tell the difference between dead and living words is to ask whether the words are drowning out the most important thing in any moment or giving it voice.
Awakening isn’t dependent on words, but neither is it independent of them, which makes words the same as everything else. This world, its speech and its silence, is the field of our awakening. Any being, event, or object might call forth awakening in us. There’s a term of art for such language: turning words. Words that turn our perspective just a degree or two, which makes all the difference. A bit of sutra floating across Huineng’s path, the cry of a bird at dawn, the response to a question coming at just the right moment—all equally illuminated, all equally capable of illuminating.
Koans are made of language that, mysteriously, conveys awakening within itself. They are made of awakening and words. As we make the words of the koans our own—wisely digesting them, in the Chinese teacher Huangbo Xiyun’s formulation—we make the awakening our own too. “Meaning” means something different in a koan: It is the true fact of the koan, which isn’t something that can be deduced by reason but is the shard of awakening contained there.
Like Sufi music and Cro-Magnon cave paintings, koans are an art form that invites us into that larger experience of things we sometimes call the spiritual. Their medium is language, which is ironic given that Chan and Zen describe themselves as a special transmission outside the scriptures, not dependent on words. But the people who originally said that were deeply literate, well-read and writing all the time, intent on understanding, intent on communicating. “To be rich in Chan is to be rich in expression,” said the teacher known as the Overnight Guest.
They spoke of reading people, events, and landscapes as texts. People are described as unscrolling sutras with every word and action—as is everything else, including what is ordinarily thought of as nonsentient. They called reality the Great Sutra. A quote from the Diamond Sutra was taken up as a koan: “All the buddhas and their teachings arise from this sutra. What is this sutra?” Sutras are recited as well as read, and the idea of reciting the Great Sutra of reality brings to mind a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy:
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window—
at most: column, tower…But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing…
When the ancestors insisted that book learning wouldn’t get you there on its own, they weren’t condemning language out of hand but making a distinction between living and dead words. Dead words have been turned into abstract objects held at a distance, accumulated and repeated rather than lived. If they encourage anything, it is to carry on with the habitual. Linji said that the idea of buddha we have in our head is a ghost buddha. In the same way, words that live only in our heads are ghost words. Living words are an essential part of the moment in which they arise, as glistening with vitality as a tree after rain. They have the power to change our minds; they have the power to heal. One way to tell the difference between dead and living words is to ask whether the words are drowning out the most important thing in any moment or giving it voice.
Awakening isn’t dependent on words, but neither is it independent of them, which makes words the same as everything else. This world, its speech and its silence, is the field of our awakening. Any being, event, or object might call forth awakening in us. There’s a term of art for such language: turning words. Words that turn our perspective just a degree or two, which makes all the difference. A bit of sutra floating across Huineng’s path, the cry of a bird at dawn, the response to a question coming at just the right moment—all equally illuminated, all equally capable of illuminating.
Koans are made of language that, mysteriously, conveys awakening within itself. They are made of awakening and words. As we make the words of the koans our own—wisely digesting them, in the Chinese teacher Huangbo Xiyun’s formulation—we make the awakening our own too. “Meaning” means something different in a koan: It is the true fact of the koan, which isn’t something that can be deduced by reason but is the shard of awakening contained there.
There once was a man in Kiev
who wanted to live in a cave.
He took all our money
and thought it was funny
Black smoke on the horizon.
* Kyiv
I'm old fashioned. I still think about Ceylon.
Ah, Andrew, another great piece and another source of comfort and hope!