Introduction to a Koan - Washing Your Bowls: Talk with Henry Shukman on September 15, 2021

during that sit i don't know how how sort of a helpful it was and whether you got a sense of this but so just one sec um i wanted to try to convey just a little bit of the flavor of sitting with a coan which is that they are sometimes actually questions like what is this who am i what is your original face from before even your parents were born what is the sound of one hand these are some of the better known coans sometimes they're questions yes and sometimes they're statements not knowing is most intimate not knowing is most intimate that's one or um [Music] put out the fire a thousand miles away stop the sound of the distant bell dwelling nowhere mind comes forth okay these are all examples of co-ads but even when they're a statement they sort of contain questions even if it's just like what the hell is this you know um usually there's something in a in a cohan that sort of doesn't make sense there that is kind of like like what's the sound of one hand i you know really what are we even supposed to do with that well the one thing that we don't need to do is try to figure it out so this is my first general point i want to make about cohen's is that actually they are invitations to mystery they are invitations not to more knowing they're not invitations to kind of colonizing more territory with our minds you know there's a certain amount i understand and now i'm going to understand something more through this cohen actually no that's not what they are they're not an invitation to broaden what we know sort of like here's the land i know and i'm i'm going to know a bit more on the sort of similar kind of land that sort of thing no they're not for that they have a very particular and i would say precious purpose um so i'm just going to lay this out first and then i'm going to back up and explain a little bit more sort of like how they came to be and you know so they're not quite sounding quite so weird and mysterious almost mystical or something no they their their their purpose is actually not so much to you know let us know more on the same level that we normally know things but actually to release knowing i know this this sounds a bit weird i know but hopefully i can bring it around by the end of the talk to release knowing and open up into being in other ways it is we know we're kind of getting somewhere with a cohan so to speak when we don't know what kind of what's going on or when we realize that we've released the need to know we've relinquished renounced the need to understand we're sort of falling being absorbed by some other sense of being some other way of being some other mode of experience singed that's what koans can sort of invite us toward and indeed into into not kind of more knowing of the kind that we know but into not knowing and a new kind of experiencing okay that's a very sort of initial kind of attempt to sort of define a purpose i want to come back to it and say a little bit more about it but now let me just swing pivot whatever to slightly different approach i'm going to give you an example of rather a well-known cohen i mean it's well known in the zen world you know i mean i say something like the sound of one hand is actually quite well known right i mean it's not only in zen circles that people have heard of that jd salinger used that as the epigraph to his great little book nine stories back in whatever that was the late 40s early 50s um so you know he he put the full coin actually of that is you know the sound of two hands clapping so here we are the kind of knowing that we know yep i know the sound of two hands clapping but what is the sound of one hand that's the original coin what's the sound of this that's like well why are you even asking me that what do i what am i supposed to do with that it's crazy yeah because it's a different it's not really even a different kind of knowing it's a release of knowing to experiencing this in a really different way what way well i want to get to that okay and maybe it's not only one way by the way it's this is uh now okay here's this is the example actually i want to i want to work with tonight so wait play with maybe you know invite us to sample enjoy taste tonight um there's a great master from the annals of zen who lived from 778 to 897 called joshu or jiaozhou the chinese name jiaozhou the sort of japanese pronunciation of his name joshu that's how it's come to many of us in the west is sort of via japan by the way zen you know really got going in china actually as chan buddhism it's a form of buddhism that's uh well it's of course you know deeply buddhist it is a form of buddhism but it's also kind of a little different from say early traditional theravada you know indian buddhism because it came to china as indian buddhism of its time which was around the year zero roughly around then started coming to china and in china it sort of morphed and became a bit more chinese you know and and it that mostly meant adopting or kind of aligning with or kind of sort of yeah not exactly adopting but absorbing some taoism now there was a happy meeting between buddhism and taoism in in certain ways one of them being that you know buddhism has this um uh this insight deep in the it's it's its roots in a deep in its tradition uh of of coming to experience what is meant by no self and related to that coming to experience what is meant by things being shunya or empty and this these two things really things are empty self is empty no self no self no things or empty self empty things these two kind of elements or insights that are in core teachings of buddhism um they found a kind of meeting place meeting point in taoism that had this sense that somehow just underneath all appearance all appearing things all things that appear this whole world of appearances that we we live in and we're part of kind of just under it or kind of just behind it or kind of right in it there's sort of another condition which they called woo which can be translated as absence and sometimes they talked about all things come forth so to present themselves blaze forth in one rendition from this absence so and all things are part of this absence so all things meet in this absence in a comparable way to the way that all things are empty in buddhist experience so all things meet in emptiness so emptiness is also oneness all in emptiness all things are one there's no separation among things okay so maybe this is all too much too fast but i'm trying to sort of uh give some of the sort of backdrop of how chan emerged and what it wanted to really share so it's a sort of a two rivers two deep rivers of practice finding that they can flow together in a marvelous way and they each have uh things to bring to the to the party and and can make practice rich and deep for human beings you know and and and so chan was this sort of two rivers flowing and mixing beautifully you know and buddhism and taoism so here we are now what what then so in this sort of rather beautiful amazing period of chinese history called the tang dynasty which was from uh uh well i think they date it usually is like 618 to 908 okay so roughly 600 700 800 those three centuries roughly during that period chan really flourished meaning lots of people found themselves sort of awakening to the realities that chan was trying to help them awaken to and among all these awakened practitioners you know some became teachers masters you know and some of those masters said things and did things that were often kind of weird but there was somehow an expression of their awakened way of seeing things and some of the things they said and did got recorded and of those recorded sayings and doings some became cohabs okay so now here's an example this master joshu yeah by the way anybody who did the math he did live for 119 years in fact they they say he was 120 when he died because they count from what we call year zero in china as year one so 120 years when he died and this is not legend the the chinese sort of bureaucrats administration generally kept good records so there's no doubt about it and quite a lot of masters in this period that's to say zen chan practitioners uh did lead quite long lives by no means all but but some some number did and there's a speculation that you know well they were actually leading extremely healthy lives they lived in valleys up in the mountains had simple diets had relatively quiet lives and so on so it's plausible anyway joshua apparently 120 when he died he uh was teaching for the last 40 years of his life and running a little monastery apparently rather sort of decrepit run down small monastery and um and he here's that here's a coin from from his teaching days it goes like this um a monk came to joshua and said i have just joined the monastery please master give me some instruction you know i've just come i've entered i've it's quite a big step i've left home i've come here all this way to practice with you i've sort of renounced my worldly life at least for some period of time and i i sort of put myself in your hands help me guide me how shall i practice joshua responds have you eaten your rice gruel yet okay so monk says please help me guide me joshua says have you eaten your rice gruel yet the monk says yes i have joshua says then wash your bowls then wash your bowls and that's the end of the coin there's just this little dialogue sort of please guide me okay have you eaten your porridge have you eaten your oatmeal they had rice grill have you eaten your cereal have you eaten your um you know your cinnamon toast crunches have you eaten your cornflakes yes i have then wash your bowls bowls plural actually because they usually had i think typically three bowls that were part of the monks paraphernalia one would be a little one medium one and a larger one i don't think even the large one was very large the larger was very large actually and they might get sort of rice in one and then maybe some little add-on in a bit of seaweed or a little pickled plum or something that could be added to the rice gruel rice gruel by the way still very common in japan and i assume in china most commonly when i've done retreats in japan quite well most days the breakfast is is rice gruel which means that basically it's kind of watery rice you know and it's it's uh the rice is a little bit more sticky so kind of slightly sort of uh it's a little bit like say oatmeal that was pretty runny if you see what i mean you know not firm oatmeal but soft and sloppy oatmeal something like that you know this rice grill is like that common dish have you eaten it yet yes i have then wash your bowls end of kind now whoa what on earth are we supposed to do this with this i mean first of all surely you know instruction in a zen monastery which is zen actually is the it's the it's a transliteration of the word diana or janna diana in sanskrit janna and pali many of you will know that janna means well it can mean two things it can mean certain deep states of meditative absorption or it can actually more generically mean meditation but either way this and but when that word diana went to china it became chandna and that became chandna just got shortened to chan and chan became zen in japan so zen meditation basically means sorry zen buddhism basically means meditation buddhism it's all about meditating so this this poor guy's come to start doing that and he's once probably like guidance in how to meditate you know what's my first practice be master answer have you finished lunch basically have you finished lunch well yes or breakfast have you finished breakfast yes so wash your bowls now how do we yeah how do we how do we how do we approach this even well what we do in in zen is if we are interested in sitting with a coin we're doing our regular sitting you know we're we're perhaps following the breath perhaps sitting in open awareness actually you know a number of practices are compatible with adding a cohan to them some are not but you know open awareness practice actually could be following breath could be what would we do well we're sitting let's say with breath we might simply throw in wash your bowls three syllables wash your bowls might just try that or we could run the little dialogue just in the back of our minds or in the front of our minds have you eaten your [Music] oatmeal yes i have then wash your bowls okay i'm gonna suggest that we can we can sort of put a put different lenses on this and so here's a few yeah there could be some sort of a practical advice here um if you've finished your meal do the washing up and perhaps that is actually a larger piece of guidance than might first appear just do the washing up what kind of adjustment in state of mind would it take for that to be enough sort of master kind of teach me the meaning of life sort of thing okay have you finished lunch yes then wash your plate could it be somehow that we are not i am not fully giving myself to this moment could it be that if i were to if i were to open up to the needs the 1915. okay um if i were to open up to the needs of this moment wholeheartedly that that would somehow make the experience of now qualitatively different from when i have other programs quietly running in the background about plans things i've got to do the things i did before you know what about if i open so that there's nothing but now excuse me just a moment i think somebody is unmuted can i do anything about that no okay okay um so that's one possible approach what would it be if i wholeheartedly meaning nothing of me was sort of left out if i fully did the next thing that needs to be done the thing right now that needs to be done and that's all i'm doing okay one possible pointer second possible pointer um actually when washing when washing washing a bowl what what is this now the reason the reason this might be worth asking what is washing a bowl is like on a course on one level well of course we know we know exactly what it is it's just the ordinary experience of washing a piece of crockery what do we call it a you know in we say crockery i think that's a uk term actually and then if you guys use that crockery and cutlery you know silverware and tableware or something you know i hope that's okay language it's just the experience of washing the plate but actually actually really is it possible that there's a way in which all the things we do the tasks we are engaged in yes we give our attention to them and we're doing them and that's sort of what they seem to be but yet maybe there's somehow a bigger wider context present almost as if sort of what we do it can be seen in our normal way experience in a normal way 100 but maybe there's a wider context that we don't normally experience maybe i mean somebody actually just the other day was telling me they were they were thinking about something and suddenly realized they were kind of fretting about something and suddenly realized that they're fretting this sort of mental activity in their minds you know that was like reflections on a great ocean it's like there's the activities that they were engaged in were part of a much bigger context and they got a sense not as an idea but as an experience of this bigger context they felt it and it was a shock you know they had been sitting with a cohen and i sort of humbly invited them to ponder them maybe the cohen had something to do with that because all of them are also while they may point us to just occupying this moment more fully they're more than that they're actually sharing a perspective a a breadth of experience that isn't um that's much wider um now another possible take is actually joshua's not even suppose he's not even sort of giving future guidance not even giving guidance as to the future if you bear with me i hope i'll make this clear so when he says have you eaten your rice gruel maybe this is too weird but let's see can you maybe this there's something here even when he's saying those words for him this other dimension i was mentioning earlier absence emptiness it's present right here even as the words are spoken in fact it is showing itself as the words have you eaten yet there's the vast boundlessness that when we taste when we experience it it puts our ordinary life doesn't negate it it puts it in such a different context such a different perspective that our hearts break open and we fall in love with whatever life brings even the difficult things change and and we become so tender and we can't help but love this life and want to help it the best we can meaning helpful beings or whatever beings we meet and come into contact with to the best of our ability um in whatever way is most appropriate and so this boundless reality for joshua is fully present because he knows everything arises from it and basically that's the zen teaching not to get that as an idea but to get it as an experience so the the monk has asked please give me guidance and here it is have you eaten yet he's already for him showing what zen can open us up to what practice can open us open us up to the monk apparently sort of doesn't see that naturally enough not many of us would and says uh yeah i have taking it on the level in which it seems to be presented and fine to do that and joshua then says so wash your bowls actually once again with these very words then wash your bowls so wash your balls here it is again it's always here always here the the the destination the goal the you know long for fulfillment that practice promises is always right here it's right here it's not actually in some fantastical remote different kind of experience it's right here in ordinary most ordinary things see joshua doesn't say you know can i have guidance just as well realize you know who you really are and find that you're a boundless whatever no just sink into your ordinary life release your sense of knowing what it is fall into the mystery let yourself fall into the mystery of this moment now not some future one not some different life this life as it is and by the way one common feature of many of these zen enlightened whatever masters or you know awakened practitioners commonly had tragic losses early in life very commonly one or both parents died um sometimes they they were witnesses to their deaths you know they had traumatic events and um and through practice found a way to turn their difficulties and hardships and losses i mean this is not in every case but in many actually to turn those to into a great beauty a very beautiful compassionate caring lives fully immersed fully yeah occupying this life the only way and place we can right here right now and maybe this is yes it is indeed one of the purposes of these coins we sort of see it in action here with joshu so okay so that's basically the end of my talk and actually i'm sorry it's a little longer than i'd planned um so end of talk gratitude to you all for listening i'd like to see if anybody's got any questions um so i'm going to open up chat and tick tick tick tick tick tick sorry what am i doing yes see what i can find okay um okay let me just okay see what i can do um thank you the best meaning of the word occupy like that the entire cheating is available for us in every moment exactly if we're able to learn it enjoy saving lightning love it we fall in love with our present moment again and again okay thank you thank you um oh yeah alan watts i love him too um now shall we we've got sort of three be with the bowl lovely um observe the dharma of life exactly consciousness of being here watch your bills being in the moment yes ramdas be here now exactly um wash your bowls chop wood carry water exactly yes the appropriate response to some currents is a belly laugh indeed um oh somebody's saying something nice about my book thank you very much one blade of grass the tao of poo yes thanks thanks thanks um if you meet the buddha on the road kill him that's nice thank you so much what's this yogi berra when you come to a fork in the road take it exactly um okay now folks does anybody want to ask a question oh here's one does it make a difference if i repeat what is this in english and then kss store spanish i think it's follow your instinct my mind seems to do this i'm deep in my spanish all the day except when i come to these meetings so then pull back the pull-back spanish is strong totally go with the spanish i have done this meditation before with the bachelor during retreat lovely yes please by all means que es esto que es esto yes yes indeed are there any analogies to the book the cloud of the unknown yes and what a great question you know i actually i have i have the book the cloud of unknown and i'm really i've read parts of it but i actually have not read the whole thing but look at the title the cloud of unknowing exactly the release of knowing the falling into mystery the immersion in not knowing absolutely deep analogies out of the christian tradition how beautiful thank you um i'm i'm scanning for other questions before we end um millions of other people are also washing dishes just like me oh how beautiful thank you exactly this human life this human life yes the bowl is a dharma daughter liberation exactly exactly i think joshua will be very happy to hear that i'm the unknowing monk congratulations excellent that's what we all want to be um um okay this is very kind um and very good comments here meaning of emptiness is form form is emptiness it means like this you know that actually okay call it this absence is showing up exactly like this this is it right here likewise this right here is absence so every phenomenon is sort of a doorway to boundless nests boundlessness every phenomenon there's a doorway to it but when we realize we're part of it find it what does it look like it looks like this looks like this it looks just like this okay that's kind of kind of a sort of a way to put it ah yeah there are guided meditations on the website um somebody's asking okay so it is actually it's time it's 8 30 here it's 7 30 with you guys i'm so honored to have you know um been able to offer this guidance today this evening for the third time actually i've been with with you all uh deep thanks to rick for um for allowing me to do this and deep deep thanks to you all for bearing with me and uh and uh letting me uh sort of uh offer what i can and also great thanks to the team tom and um tom and george and art uh thank you so much uh i want to just bow to everybody and express deep gratitude ah we're so lucky to be able to practice and best of all is practicing together

Channel: Rick Hanson

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Keywords: meditate, free guided meditation, guided meditation, Meditation for positive energy, Meditation for anxiety, Inner peace meditation, Mindfulness meditation, Mindset meditation, Mindset therapy, Mental Health Resources, Wellness Meditation, Brain science and meditation, Positive brain change, Neuroplasticity and anxiety, Neuroplasticity healing, Rick Hanson Guided Meditation, dr rick

Id: aqBgfNeS9fI

Length: 41min 9sec (2469 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021