Why is a Nichiren Buddhist commenting on koans anyway?
I am sure I have mentioned it before but koans are "case studies." They are often pithy little comments or dialogues between Zen Masters in the past. But they could also be full blown stories, or passages from the sutras, or even statements of Buddhist teachings. Back when I was in high school some of my teachers were really into these stories and shared them in class. That was my first exposure to Buddhism. I was already hooked on the parables of Jesus because of the way they overturned the prejudices and expections of his contemporaries (and of ourselves) and pointed to a deeper and more compassionate way of living. At least that is how I was taught about the parables from 6th grade on (when I started going to Catholic schools). And now to discover not just a handful but whole books full of such thought-provoking brain teasing and sometimes humorous teachings and anecdotes seemed too good to be true.
So I devoured books by Alan Watts, Paul Reps, D.T. Suzuki and so forth, and that is how I started wondering about Buddhism itself. It was obvious to me that these stories were emerging from a wisdom, practice, and way of life that I knew nothing about. Instead of Zen Buddhism, however, my first encounter with "Buddhists" was with the Nichiren Shoshu of America. I was deeply suspicious and critical of them from the very first meeting I accidentally stumbled into - but the chanting really resonated with me. In the end I did give it a try for two years and that was enough to discern that what they were teaching was not authentic Buddhism. Fortunately they did also expose me to the writings and practice of Nichiren Shonin, the Lotus Sutra, and the practice of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo which I did feel was authentic.
After leaving NSA I hooked up with the Won Buddhists, and though they have a list of a dozen (or more) koans, they don't really stress them at all. But I continued reading about koans on my own over the years. When I came to live in San Francisco I found my spiritual home base with Nichiren Shu. At the same time I finally met people who had real experience working with koans. These were people who actually used them in contemplation training in authentic lineages as opposed to armchair Buddhists (like myself) just reading about them. This gave me a chance to really get into them on the level of practice and not just literary appreciation, to see them as contemplative tools and not just clever stories or paradoxes.
To be honest, while I have long been fascinated by koans, I have also long been intimidated by them. The whole koan thing has this "I know something you don't know" mystique about it. I always found this infuriating and disconcerting. I always wondered if I really was missing out on something, because heaven knows I didn't see the point of many koans and even the one's whose point or points did seem clear also seemed to hold the tantalizing promise of something else just over the horizon. Also from reading the accounts of Bankei and Hakuin and even the stories in Phillip Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen, it seemed like working with koans (at least the Rinzai way) would involve deliberately driving oneself to a nervous breakdown. My life certainly had and has enough problems without all that! And yet Zen (or at least certain strains of Rinzai) seem to be saying "No pain no gain." So I had always carried around in the back of my mind the thoughts that (1) you are missing something BIG, and (2) you are a wussy for not seeking out a Zen Master and taking up this challenge, and (3) if you present yourself as a Buddhist teacher (which I became expected to do after being ordained as a Nichiren Shu minister) someone who really does know the big secret(s) and has done the hard work is going to ambush you in Dharma Combat and expose you as a Dharma fraud because you don't know what the sound of one hand clapping is or whatnot. So these little Zen gremlins were really undermining my confidence in myself and in my own Buddhist practice. Of course my faith in the Lotus Sutra and the efficacy and sufficiency of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo (when understood as not merely a verbal formula) kept these gremlins in line. Still, something had to be done!
Fortunately I met two people over the last few years who, as I said, had done real work with koans and were willing to work with me based on their own experience and understanding of koan training. Because I trusted them and knew that they respected the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Buddhism and would not try to turn me away from my primary practice or compromise my faith I decided to trust them and take up the challenge of koans.
The first person (who has asked to remain anonymous) really taught me a lot and helped me see what koans were and were not. That helped a lot! Having done koan work he knew the officially accepted responses in the traditions in which he had trained but of course was trying to make sure that I really got it and wasn't just accidentally stumbling upon the right phrase or gesture. More on that later. We went through the Sound of One Hand, Joshu's Mu, All Things Return to the One, Nansen Kills a Cat, that damn story about the Ox which is #38 in the Gateless Gate (I really found that one frustrating and always have, and now that I know at least one "official answer" it still bugs me - maybe even more) .
Later I took up this kind of practice with Taigen Dan Leighton who is designing his own koan curriculum. Taigen's approach is not Rinzai but Soto, so he is not looking for any official answers or responses as I don't think the Soto way of working with koans ever came up with any. Also, instead of focusing on just one word or short phrase as Rinzai tends to do, he wants people to look at the koan both as a whole and in each of its parts, and to let the koan really sink in through the whole of one's life as opposed to just hammering away at a part of it in order to force a kensho (seeing one's true nature) experience. Rather, he emphasizes genjo (actualizing the nature) in daily life. With Taigen I have worked on several other cases from the Gateless Gate as well as a Chinese poem that relates to practice. And Taigen makes it clear that one never really finishes a koan, even if one moves on to others. There are always greater depths to realize, or perhaps it would be better to say the unfolding of them in the actuality of our daily lives does not cease.
One last element I'll add here because it pertains to what I have learned about koans. Many years ago I found a book called The Sound of One Hand which is a translation of a Japanese book wherein a disgruntled Rinzai monk in early 20th century Japan decided to expose the fraudulent practices and corruption of Rinzai Zen by publishing all the official answers of the two most prominent Rinzai lineages in Japan. I held off on buying that book (it is out of print but fairly easy to find used copies in San Francisco) for a long time. I finally did buy it and put it on my shelf. I finally took it down a couple of months ago. At that point I had been doing koan work with Taigen for almost two years. It was a fascinating and very illuminating read to see what kind of answers the Rinzai tradition was looking for and accepting in the early 20th century in Japan. It was disillusioning to realize that these so-called enlightened Zen people weren't really expressing their own insights but a bunch of rote answers instead. Still, while those answers were often culturally bound and in any case useless because real Zen doesn't accept hand-me-down second or third hand responses, it was useful to view the book as a kind of pointer to the different koans in the same way the many commentaries and talks about the koans can be useful pointers.
So what was the result of all this? Do I still feel that there is something I don't know? Or am I know "in the know"? Do I still feel like a wussy? Or have I earned my koan spurs? Do I still fear being ambushed by Dharma combatants? Or am I now the one who can cut others down to size? No to all of it.
I now realize that there is nothing to know. There is no secret gnostic code to learn, no mystical rapture that must be attained. What I was missing out on was what everyone tends to miss out on and what I still tend to miss out on - being really and fully present to life. The koans help direct you back to that.
I no longer feel like a wussy because I have dared to take up the challenge and to test my insight and the depth of my practice in private encounters with koan teachers. Note that when I say "practice" this includes the depth of my practice of Odaimoku. I do not mean that the depth of Odaimoku was being or is being tested. What I mean is that the depth of my practice of Odiamoku is what was and is at issue. How deeply have I seen into, realized, and actualized what the Odaimoku is about? That is the real question. Even still, I do get a kind of "stage freight" before the practice discussions (Taigen uses the term dokusan), esp. if I don't have anything to "present" insofar as my understanding of the koan goes (and it can't be a merely conceptual understanding). And each new koan is a new challenge (or perhaps the same challenge in a different guise), and even the old ones are new each time one looks at them. Life is like that.
What about Dharma combat? I am less worried about that now. I have yet to be challenged in that way at Faithful Fools, and I have survived being guest speaker at several Zen centers. If I was going to be blindsided by Zen it would probably have already happened. As it is, I have yet to feel that I have been caught "with my pants down" by any questions from Zen students or teachers. This does not mean I am Captain Know It All Supercool. It simply means that I have confidence that I am able to share and explain Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra, and Odaimoku in a competent way and that I can do a serviceable job of handling questions about it and perhaps more importantly of grounding it all in actual practice and daily life. I have in fact engaged in what might be called Dharma combat from time to time and the ground didn't open up and swallow me. So I am more secure about it now. And in any case, I have learned that if you fall off the horse, just get back on again. (If Pia is reading this you know how literally I have learned that lesson.)
So now a few words about koans themselves. Here, in no particular order, is how I currently think about them (this is of course subject to revision):
Koans are not the secret keys to enlightenment or buddhahood. The teachers who have worked with me have not presented them that way either. My first teacher said that they were kind of like diagnostic tools in that each koan is about a different aspect of Buddha Dharma and tests your ability to relate to that principle in a very concrete way and not just conceptually. In other words, you must not only see the point of the koan but must fully embody it as naturally as you take a breath or write a blog, or drive a car, or hug your wife and daughter, or whatever the moment truly calls for.
Koans then are about taking the next step after conceptually learning the Dharma. Perhaps one doesn't need to even begin with a conceptual understanding as the koans demonstrate the various teachings, but it sure helps. Or again, koans are about taking the next step after formal practice of the Dharma. Sure you can recite the sutras or sit still staring at a wall until your eyelids drop off or chant until your jaw drops off, but if confronted with the Buddha Dharma in everyday situations or if expressed in a less formal and perhaps more spontaneous and natural way would you still recognize it? Would you be able to relate to it? Could you be it? Too many people who get interested in Buddhism or Buddhist practice (and I include myself in this) get caught on the level of conceptualizing or just relating to the teachings and practices in formal and structured situations, discourses, and practices. But life is not always like that. Can you really see and live the Dharma in your whole life? Koans are ways of testing how well you can do this. Actually they are invitations to do this. In one sense they are also as artificial as reading discourses or chanting or formal sitting meditation. But they are on the fringe of artifice and the actual way life is lived. They invite us to enter into them and then to see how the principle(s) they express are being enacted here and now in the actual mess in which we are living.
This is why koans are so seemingly irrational. Actually they are not about being irrational or illogical or amoral or anything of the kind. They simply invite us to enter into life situations as they really are without all the projections and filters and divisions that we usually approach life with. This does not mean that concptualizing and analysis and conventional distinctions are to be ignored or disregrded, but the must be put into perspective as the impermanent conventional constructs that they are. In fact, there are koans that also challenge a one-sided attachment to the nonconceptual.
It should be noted that the sutras themselves contain many passages and teachings which aim to do the same thing. In fact, the classic koan collections include sutra passages. So this way of trying to assimilate, realize, and embody Buddhist insights concreteley, directly, and immediately is not unique to Zen or the koan tradition. It is the heritage of Buddhism as a whole. But the koan tradition has taken this particular approach and refined and utilized it to an unprecedented degree.
In reading through the koan collections now I find that they are a lot less opaque. They have become even more meaningful to me than they were back when I was first intrigued by them in high school. For one thing, I have learned a lot more about Buddhism on the doctrinal and practical levels. This has provided me the background and proper context for the koans. And now that I have really begun working with as opposed to just reading them I now see that their aim is not just to be paradoxical, or witty, or irrational, or clever, or shocking. I see what they are aiming at - the concrete reality that is the life I am actually living - and that it is direct presentation or demonstration of Buddhist teaching and not some new or unique teaching. It might be an overstatement but koans are not exoteric secret doctrine but are actually very down to earth exemplifications of Buddhist teaching and practice (even if their language is sometimes rather exotic or strange or in the nature of very obscure inside jokes).
So it might seem that suddenly I am peppering my writings with koans. But this interest is not actually any sudden development at all. It goes back to even before I first heard of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. It is only now, however, that I feel competent enough to publicly write about them. (It helps that I have recently learned that people like Alan Watts didn't have any of the background and experience that I have and in fact wrote a lot of rubbish, and I even find D.T. Suzuki's writings suspect now.) I am not saying that I am an expert in them or that I am in any position whatsoever to teach koans to other people (I am not). But I feel that I am at least in a position to take advantage of their richness and share some of that with others as the teaching stories that they are. I am really appreciating how they can shed light on Buddhist principles and practices that are shared by all Buddhists and are not just the provenance of Zen.
One other thing, my discussions or reference to koans also does not mean that I rate them higher than the practice of Odaimoku or that I am jumping ship to join the Zen camp. In fact, I feel more confident as a teacher of Nichiren Buddhism for having worked with koans, and this includes in the area of shakubuku (by which I mean breaking through entangelments and subduing afflictions). I now see from the inside and not just the outside what koans are about and how to keep them in proper perspective. They are not meant to replace the sutras or cause the neglect of the sutras (and it was a Zen teacher who pointed this out to me when he overheard my critique that koans seem to do this in Zen practice). They are just skillful means to help us relate more directly and concretely to the Wonderful Dharma unfolding in and as our life right here and now. Furthermore, while the practice of Odaimoku can benefit from approaching it as a koan (Hakuin's Letter to a Nichiren Nun explains this), I still do not think that Odaimoku should be reduced to being viewed or used as just another koan (one among many). While the Odaimoku does have functions that overlap with the function of koans, it is also about more than just that. To oversimplify, koans are about raising a sense of doubt about the Dharma's concrete meaning and really making an effort to see into one's life. Odaimoku should also do this. But Odaimoku is also an expression of the single moment of faith and joy in the Wonderful Dharma, and that is a whole other topic and gets into a whole other aspect of Buddhist practice that I believe is outside the direct purview of the koans.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
So I devoured books by Alan Watts, Paul Reps, D.T. Suzuki and so forth, and that is how I started wondering about Buddhism itself. It was obvious to me that these stories were emerging from a wisdom, practice, and way of life that I knew nothing about. Instead of Zen Buddhism, however, my first encounter with "Buddhists" was with the Nichiren Shoshu of America. I was deeply suspicious and critical of them from the very first meeting I accidentally stumbled into - but the chanting really resonated with me. In the end I did give it a try for two years and that was enough to discern that what they were teaching was not authentic Buddhism. Fortunately they did also expose me to the writings and practice of Nichiren Shonin, the Lotus Sutra, and the practice of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo which I did feel was authentic.
After leaving NSA I hooked up with the Won Buddhists, and though they have a list of a dozen (or more) koans, they don't really stress them at all. But I continued reading about koans on my own over the years. When I came to live in San Francisco I found my spiritual home base with Nichiren Shu. At the same time I finally met people who had real experience working with koans. These were people who actually used them in contemplation training in authentic lineages as opposed to armchair Buddhists (like myself) just reading about them. This gave me a chance to really get into them on the level of practice and not just literary appreciation, to see them as contemplative tools and not just clever stories or paradoxes.
To be honest, while I have long been fascinated by koans, I have also long been intimidated by them. The whole koan thing has this "I know something you don't know" mystique about it. I always found this infuriating and disconcerting. I always wondered if I really was missing out on something, because heaven knows I didn't see the point of many koans and even the one's whose point or points did seem clear also seemed to hold the tantalizing promise of something else just over the horizon. Also from reading the accounts of Bankei and Hakuin and even the stories in Phillip Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen, it seemed like working with koans (at least the Rinzai way) would involve deliberately driving oneself to a nervous breakdown. My life certainly had and has enough problems without all that! And yet Zen (or at least certain strains of Rinzai) seem to be saying "No pain no gain." So I had always carried around in the back of my mind the thoughts that (1) you are missing something BIG, and (2) you are a wussy for not seeking out a Zen Master and taking up this challenge, and (3) if you present yourself as a Buddhist teacher (which I became expected to do after being ordained as a Nichiren Shu minister) someone who really does know the big secret(s) and has done the hard work is going to ambush you in Dharma Combat and expose you as a Dharma fraud because you don't know what the sound of one hand clapping is or whatnot. So these little Zen gremlins were really undermining my confidence in myself and in my own Buddhist practice. Of course my faith in the Lotus Sutra and the efficacy and sufficiency of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo (when understood as not merely a verbal formula) kept these gremlins in line. Still, something had to be done!
Fortunately I met two people over the last few years who, as I said, had done real work with koans and were willing to work with me based on their own experience and understanding of koan training. Because I trusted them and knew that they respected the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Buddhism and would not try to turn me away from my primary practice or compromise my faith I decided to trust them and take up the challenge of koans.
The first person (who has asked to remain anonymous) really taught me a lot and helped me see what koans were and were not. That helped a lot! Having done koan work he knew the officially accepted responses in the traditions in which he had trained but of course was trying to make sure that I really got it and wasn't just accidentally stumbling upon the right phrase or gesture. More on that later. We went through the Sound of One Hand, Joshu's Mu, All Things Return to the One, Nansen Kills a Cat, that damn story about the Ox which is #38 in the Gateless Gate (I really found that one frustrating and always have, and now that I know at least one "official answer" it still bugs me - maybe even more) .
Later I took up this kind of practice with Taigen Dan Leighton who is designing his own koan curriculum. Taigen's approach is not Rinzai but Soto, so he is not looking for any official answers or responses as I don't think the Soto way of working with koans ever came up with any. Also, instead of focusing on just one word or short phrase as Rinzai tends to do, he wants people to look at the koan both as a whole and in each of its parts, and to let the koan really sink in through the whole of one's life as opposed to just hammering away at a part of it in order to force a kensho (seeing one's true nature) experience. Rather, he emphasizes genjo (actualizing the nature) in daily life. With Taigen I have worked on several other cases from the Gateless Gate as well as a Chinese poem that relates to practice. And Taigen makes it clear that one never really finishes a koan, even if one moves on to others. There are always greater depths to realize, or perhaps it would be better to say the unfolding of them in the actuality of our daily lives does not cease.
One last element I'll add here because it pertains to what I have learned about koans. Many years ago I found a book called The Sound of One Hand which is a translation of a Japanese book wherein a disgruntled Rinzai monk in early 20th century Japan decided to expose the fraudulent practices and corruption of Rinzai Zen by publishing all the official answers of the two most prominent Rinzai lineages in Japan. I held off on buying that book (it is out of print but fairly easy to find used copies in San Francisco) for a long time. I finally did buy it and put it on my shelf. I finally took it down a couple of months ago. At that point I had been doing koan work with Taigen for almost two years. It was a fascinating and very illuminating read to see what kind of answers the Rinzai tradition was looking for and accepting in the early 20th century in Japan. It was disillusioning to realize that these so-called enlightened Zen people weren't really expressing their own insights but a bunch of rote answers instead. Still, while those answers were often culturally bound and in any case useless because real Zen doesn't accept hand-me-down second or third hand responses, it was useful to view the book as a kind of pointer to the different koans in the same way the many commentaries and talks about the koans can be useful pointers.
So what was the result of all this? Do I still feel that there is something I don't know? Or am I know "in the know"? Do I still feel like a wussy? Or have I earned my koan spurs? Do I still fear being ambushed by Dharma combatants? Or am I now the one who can cut others down to size? No to all of it.
I now realize that there is nothing to know. There is no secret gnostic code to learn, no mystical rapture that must be attained. What I was missing out on was what everyone tends to miss out on and what I still tend to miss out on - being really and fully present to life. The koans help direct you back to that.
I no longer feel like a wussy because I have dared to take up the challenge and to test my insight and the depth of my practice in private encounters with koan teachers. Note that when I say "practice" this includes the depth of my practice of Odaimoku. I do not mean that the depth of Odaimoku was being or is being tested. What I mean is that the depth of my practice of Odiamoku is what was and is at issue. How deeply have I seen into, realized, and actualized what the Odaimoku is about? That is the real question. Even still, I do get a kind of "stage freight" before the practice discussions (Taigen uses the term dokusan), esp. if I don't have anything to "present" insofar as my understanding of the koan goes (and it can't be a merely conceptual understanding). And each new koan is a new challenge (or perhaps the same challenge in a different guise), and even the old ones are new each time one looks at them. Life is like that.
What about Dharma combat? I am less worried about that now. I have yet to be challenged in that way at Faithful Fools, and I have survived being guest speaker at several Zen centers. If I was going to be blindsided by Zen it would probably have already happened. As it is, I have yet to feel that I have been caught "with my pants down" by any questions from Zen students or teachers. This does not mean I am Captain Know It All Supercool. It simply means that I have confidence that I am able to share and explain Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra, and Odaimoku in a competent way and that I can do a serviceable job of handling questions about it and perhaps more importantly of grounding it all in actual practice and daily life. I have in fact engaged in what might be called Dharma combat from time to time and the ground didn't open up and swallow me. So I am more secure about it now. And in any case, I have learned that if you fall off the horse, just get back on again. (If Pia is reading this you know how literally I have learned that lesson.)
So now a few words about koans themselves. Here, in no particular order, is how I currently think about them (this is of course subject to revision):
Koans are not the secret keys to enlightenment or buddhahood. The teachers who have worked with me have not presented them that way either. My first teacher said that they were kind of like diagnostic tools in that each koan is about a different aspect of Buddha Dharma and tests your ability to relate to that principle in a very concrete way and not just conceptually. In other words, you must not only see the point of the koan but must fully embody it as naturally as you take a breath or write a blog, or drive a car, or hug your wife and daughter, or whatever the moment truly calls for.
Koans then are about taking the next step after conceptually learning the Dharma. Perhaps one doesn't need to even begin with a conceptual understanding as the koans demonstrate the various teachings, but it sure helps. Or again, koans are about taking the next step after formal practice of the Dharma. Sure you can recite the sutras or sit still staring at a wall until your eyelids drop off or chant until your jaw drops off, but if confronted with the Buddha Dharma in everyday situations or if expressed in a less formal and perhaps more spontaneous and natural way would you still recognize it? Would you be able to relate to it? Could you be it? Too many people who get interested in Buddhism or Buddhist practice (and I include myself in this) get caught on the level of conceptualizing or just relating to the teachings and practices in formal and structured situations, discourses, and practices. But life is not always like that. Can you really see and live the Dharma in your whole life? Koans are ways of testing how well you can do this. Actually they are invitations to do this. In one sense they are also as artificial as reading discourses or chanting or formal sitting meditation. But they are on the fringe of artifice and the actual way life is lived. They invite us to enter into them and then to see how the principle(s) they express are being enacted here and now in the actual mess in which we are living.
This is why koans are so seemingly irrational. Actually they are not about being irrational or illogical or amoral or anything of the kind. They simply invite us to enter into life situations as they really are without all the projections and filters and divisions that we usually approach life with. This does not mean that concptualizing and analysis and conventional distinctions are to be ignored or disregrded, but the must be put into perspective as the impermanent conventional constructs that they are. In fact, there are koans that also challenge a one-sided attachment to the nonconceptual.
It should be noted that the sutras themselves contain many passages and teachings which aim to do the same thing. In fact, the classic koan collections include sutra passages. So this way of trying to assimilate, realize, and embody Buddhist insights concreteley, directly, and immediately is not unique to Zen or the koan tradition. It is the heritage of Buddhism as a whole. But the koan tradition has taken this particular approach and refined and utilized it to an unprecedented degree.
In reading through the koan collections now I find that they are a lot less opaque. They have become even more meaningful to me than they were back when I was first intrigued by them in high school. For one thing, I have learned a lot more about Buddhism on the doctrinal and practical levels. This has provided me the background and proper context for the koans. And now that I have really begun working with as opposed to just reading them I now see that their aim is not just to be paradoxical, or witty, or irrational, or clever, or shocking. I see what they are aiming at - the concrete reality that is the life I am actually living - and that it is direct presentation or demonstration of Buddhist teaching and not some new or unique teaching. It might be an overstatement but koans are not exoteric secret doctrine but are actually very down to earth exemplifications of Buddhist teaching and practice (even if their language is sometimes rather exotic or strange or in the nature of very obscure inside jokes).
So it might seem that suddenly I am peppering my writings with koans. But this interest is not actually any sudden development at all. It goes back to even before I first heard of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. It is only now, however, that I feel competent enough to publicly write about them. (It helps that I have recently learned that people like Alan Watts didn't have any of the background and experience that I have and in fact wrote a lot of rubbish, and I even find D.T. Suzuki's writings suspect now.) I am not saying that I am an expert in them or that I am in any position whatsoever to teach koans to other people (I am not). But I feel that I am at least in a position to take advantage of their richness and share some of that with others as the teaching stories that they are. I am really appreciating how they can shed light on Buddhist principles and practices that are shared by all Buddhists and are not just the provenance of Zen.
One other thing, my discussions or reference to koans also does not mean that I rate them higher than the practice of Odaimoku or that I am jumping ship to join the Zen camp. In fact, I feel more confident as a teacher of Nichiren Buddhism for having worked with koans, and this includes in the area of shakubuku (by which I mean breaking through entangelments and subduing afflictions). I now see from the inside and not just the outside what koans are about and how to keep them in proper perspective. They are not meant to replace the sutras or cause the neglect of the sutras (and it was a Zen teacher who pointed this out to me when he overheard my critique that koans seem to do this in Zen practice). They are just skillful means to help us relate more directly and concretely to the Wonderful Dharma unfolding in and as our life right here and now. Furthermore, while the practice of Odaimoku can benefit from approaching it as a koan (Hakuin's Letter to a Nichiren Nun explains this), I still do not think that Odaimoku should be reduced to being viewed or used as just another koan (one among many). While the Odaimoku does have functions that overlap with the function of koans, it is also about more than just that. To oversimplify, koans are about raising a sense of doubt about the Dharma's concrete meaning and really making an effort to see into one's life. Odaimoku should also do this. But Odaimoku is also an expression of the single moment of faith and joy in the Wonderful Dharma, and that is a whole other topic and gets into a whole other aspect of Buddhist practice that I believe is outside the direct purview of the koans.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
posted by Ryuei at 12:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home