On page 39 of MCTB2 Ingram writes, "Lack of wisdom can lead to an overemphasis on acquiring knowledge over practice and direct experience, and desperate attempts to think your way to enlightenment. (Note: Zen koan training at its best is something else entirely.)"

Does anyone have stories of koan training at its best? 

Any suggestions for books, articles, or other media which teach readers especially skillful ways of engaging with koans?

I did read a collection of koans over a decade ago, but I was mostly playing an academic game of spot the buddhist vocab word, lol, so I don't have an especially deep appreciation of them yet!

Thank you for your time!

I've not had much exposure to zen but the koan "I do not know what any thing is" found it's way to me. 

Koan practice is like ringing a gong. You intone the koan and let it ring through the psyche. 

​​​​​​​The above one has taken me deeper into the mind time and time again. It has played an important role in my own journey. 

I think you would have to ask Daniel since it would be his opinion.

If you want to understand what koan training is, you can find a lot of information by doing a web search.

​​​​​​​I have done some koan training at a Zen temple. Some people liked it, but I didn't find it to be helpful. People are different. 

https://www.wordnik.com/words/koan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan

Bahiya Baby:

Are you comfortable with talking about how your understanding of that koan has evolved or stayed relevant for you?

I can hear it in my mind and simultaneously recognize how it alludes to the fact that "I" don't do the knowing. That "knowing" isn't a single well-formed phenomenon, and neither is anything else, and so on.

To me, the above relationship with koans makes them a bit like hypnotic suggestions or scripts.

For you, is this kind of relationship you have with it?

...

Jim:

As an occult author, I try not to bug other authors, artists, musicians, etc, unless I think they might like to be a guest on my podcast, or that my using their time would somehow benefit them. Those sorts of people tend to be busy with their calling, family, day job, and so on!

And I don't really need Daniel's opinion specifically, I just recognize that there are people with more experience than me here, and it would be cool if those people shared positive stories about how koans helped them or people they know. It's the sort of thing I feel forums are good for!

And I do already have access to google, wiki, wiktionary, amazon, multiple AI subscriptions, and as many book cases as my apartment can fit. I have more info than I can read in a lifetime! Others have more discernment than me, and may have already identified some of the best in depth materials. So to me, it makes sense that if there's a forum with people more experienced than me, and with higher signal to noise ratio than most of the internet, that this would be a good place for a thread like this to be available for other people searching the internet!

[Wordnik looks cool though, so I do appreciate you sharing!]

I see you weren't that impressed with it though! If you're comfortable, I'd also be interested in hearing about the ways that koans didn't do too much for you!

In the interest of total transparency, I am an occultist writing "high magick" grimoires, meaning no rituals for inducing material ends like money. It's all about attaining "wisdoms," which hopefully lead to what you actually want in a sustainable way, rather than accidentally manifesting an unfortunate insurance pay out or whatever.

Koans fascinate me as a genre of microliterature which, for some people, help them along their spiritual paths.

My real interest here is in analyzing the aesthetic grammars of koans, both because if I have the right understandings they might help me, and because I might be able to use those aesthetic techniques in ways which are more powerful for additional demographics.

But yes, like you, koans didn't do too much for me on a deep level. They clearly do for some people though, so identifying why it works for some and not for others could be fruitful as well.

My advice would be for you to contact a Rinzai Zen teacher and ask this question of that person. Rinzai Zen is the "home" of koan training. Also, for the intellectual side of things, read "Sitting with Koans," a Zen koan teaching compilation by John Daido Loori, a very good Zen teacher: 

https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Koans-Essential-Writings-Introspection/dp/0861713699

The true gold standard for getting a "sense" for koans and related Zen instruction and ways of approaching a practice is "Moon in a Dewdrop," a truly great Zen master who lived in 13th century Japan.

I practiced Zen for quite a few years before I switched to vipassana. I didn't get very far with shikantaza, the Zen "just sitting" practice, but my affinity for koans remains and actually grew stronger the more I developed my vipassana practice. Not sure why - just how my mind works, I suppose. I re-read "Moon in a Dewdrop" every year just to re-check and rebalance.

Picture  a snake eating its own tail. Then slowly moving up.further and further ,devouring itself. Try to Picture it eating itself to completion. At some point you will loose comprehension and rational thought trying to Picture it. You might even just blip out or get goosebumps . Try this exercise  once and a while 

Chris:

Yeah, good point on asking a Rinzai teacher. I'll have to consider that, and possibly get over some of my aversion to spiritual teachers. From my current perspective, there seem to be more issues with that kind of relationship on the "occult" side of the fence. I don't mind taking longer to figure things out though, in comparison to what has happened to people I know...

I did a fair bit of just sitting way back when also. It felt like improved my concentration, but it didn't seem to push me anywhere valuable at the time. I had a professor rather than a "teacher" though, so maybe that was part of it

I appreciate the books, and will definitely be checking them out in the near future!

...

Matt:

Haha, I love me some ouroboros! I spend plenty of time using visualization as a tool to enter nonrationality, and it definitely has its merits.

My preference is actually alternating periods of emphasizing nonrationality (nondivision) and then rationality (division). The idea being to help integrate the two by writing paths between each domain more clearly into the subconscious and conscious mind (or whatever metaphors you prefer).

This ties into the koan theme here, and maybe you were subtly implying this, but words tend to be used "rationally," rationing off parts of experience with words as labels. But clever writing, such as koans or Finnegans Wake or "barbarous speech," can sieze the means of reproduction (words, but also practices I suspect you can imagine) in order to subvert a reader's ratios of meaning, in order to self destruct sense into nonsense (and perhaps non-sense too).

"What happens if ... "

pick a koan, any koan...


if you meet a swordsman in the road, draw your sword
don't share a poem with one who doesn't appreciate poetry
​​​​​​​~rinzai

koans are like jokes,
and zen is like a sense of humor
​​​​​​​
if you need it explained to you,
you have already been given up for lost

dogen, with typical grandmotherly kindness, makes it easy...


from the shobogenzo, trans tanahashi


​​​​​​​Mayu, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk
approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and
there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?”
“Although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent,”
Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching
everywhere.”
“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the
monk.
Mayu just kept fanning himself.
The monk bowed deeply.
The actualization of the buddha dharma, the vital path of its
authentic transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to
fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can
have wind without fanning, you understand neither permanence nor
the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent; because of that,
the wind of the buddha house brings forth the gold of the earth and
ripens the cream of the long river.

Written around midautumn, the first year of the Tempuku Era
[1233], and given to my lay student Koshu Yo of Kyushu Island.
Revised in the fourth year of the Kencho Era [1252].

For a burning would is come to dance inane.
~fw, joyce

zen master seung sahn explains koan practice


https://kwanumzen.org/teaching-library/1988/03/01/kong-ans-mind-to-mind-connection

I've never studied koans formally, but they give me a bit of a vibe as say the suttas, where you will be reading stuff that doesn't make sense but over time just as you practice it makes more and more sense. 

Like I remember coming across the famous koan "if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, does it make a sound?" Back in my more scientific materialist days and thinking "well duh". But now these days my attitude is more much "oh I'm starting to see what they were getting at!"

Terry:

Lol, well that webpage certainly explains why koans might not be an intuitive tool for people like me (especially when taught about them by philosophy professors).

I must admit, I've been using a particular type of ecstatic dance, butoh, to do similar things to what Zen Master Seung Sahn described. There are ways to make every moment into butoh, as long as you aren't too ecstatic about it.

I'm a big fan of the described four kinds of "like this" koans, but to use thelemic jargon for a second, I suppose I have launched myself towards these ways of doing from a different sephira.

I really appreciate you sharing such a high quality resource, and I'll definitely be going through more of the website given enough time, but I suspect this type of koan use won't really be a great tool for a writer who isn't even going to show their unoriginal face, lol.

That's okay though, since even if a finger pointing towards the moon obscures the moon, engaging with beautiful metasystems about pointing can (for people like me) reveal the moonlight upon all fingers and all pointings until all the separation disseparates, and Dissolution Coagulates.

Still, it is good to have access to koans as a tool which presumably contains antidotes to the side effects of other methods.

Thanks again!

...

Geoffrey:

Yeah, I've had a similar relationship with that exact koan, lol. Thank you for sharing!

not a koan



from world history encyclopedia
​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Anglo-Irish bishop and an empiricist and idealist philosopher. He infamously claimed that no matter exists outside of God and that things only exist outside of our minds and perceptions because God perceives them. This extreme position, although not total scepticism, has drawn much criticism from other philosophers ever since. Berkeley's work continues to be studied for his cutting insights into the nature of philosophical enquiry and his insistence that philosophers not dream up world views that contradict common sense.

perhaps the most accessible of zen collections for western thinkers is 101 zen stories by paul reps...

https://terebess.hu/zen/101ZenStones.pdf



1. A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912) received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in saved tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. 'It is overfull. No more will go in!'

‘Like this cup,' Nan-in said. ‘You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup? ' 

Man, I haven't thought about Berkeley in a loooong time. I must admit I've been going back and looking at some christian ideas but just redefining God in ways that cause it all to make way more sense to my current mystical perspectives than what people usually seem to believe.

Definitely gives me more sympathy for those who identify as Christian, but basically none of the christians I interact with have anything I would consider a healthy relationship with what they name "God," so it tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth, even if I can still see the Love who birthed the language games they appear to be playing.

...

I really like this Cup of Tea story. As a chaote, one of the foundational practices is adopting new belief systems with some frequency, and I think that practice really helps with clinging too much to beliefs, even if those beliefs have utility in some circumstances.

It's also super important, in my view, for people engaging with magickal fictions to have experience exiting them, lol.

I realize my above description of God based language games is not unlike that professor holding onto his existing views, but man, I've purposefully inhabited toxic views in controlled environments before, and it's just not something I see as beneficial to do more than a couple times, unless there's a specific demographic you would do well to understand better, and you know how to abandon ship when it hurts more than it heals.

Thanks again for sharing! Bite sized things like this collection of stories are a nice alternative to social media when you aren't necessarily going to commit to something that takes more time.

Alley Faint Wurds

Man, I haven't thought about Berkeley in a loooong time. I must admit I've been going back and looking at some christian ideas but just redefining God in ways that cause it all to make way more sense to my current mystical perspectives than what people usually seem to believe.

Definitely gives me more sympathy for those who identify as Christian, but basically none of the christians I interact with have anything I would consider a healthy relationship with what they name "God," so it tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth, even if I can still see the Love who birthed the language games they appear to be playing.

...


   Try meister eckhardt.



https://german.yale.edu/sites/default/files/meister-eckhart-maurice-o-c-walshe-bernard-mcginn-the-complete-mystical-works-of-meister-eckhart-the-crossroad-publishing-company-2009.pdf



lots of bitesized pieces there, you can dip into it anywhere...


the "buddha of the north" emmanuel swedenborg projected a comprehensive spiritual vision, based on the bible, of great wonder and detail

the depth of these visionaries is clearly beyond human capacity




I really like this Cup of Tea story. As a chaote, one of the foundational practices is adopting new belief systems with some frequency, and I think that practice really helps with clinging too much to beliefs, even if those beliefs have utility in some circumstances.

It's also super important, in my view, for people engaging with magickal fictions to have experience exiting them, lol.


   The idea in zen buddhist meditation is to exit all dualistic thinking. Beliefs involve taking sides. To believe is to eclipse all possibility of knowing. One doessn't know something by weighing and measuring one knows by tasting.


I realize my above description of God based language games is not unlike that professor holding onto his existing views, but man, I've purposefully inhabited toxic views in controlled environments before, and it's just not something I see as beneficial to do more than a couple times, unless there's a specific demographic you would do well to understand better, and you know how to abandon ship when it hurts more than it heals.


   Squeak, wheel, and be greased.


Thanks again for sharing! Bite sized things like this collection of stories are a nice alternative to social media when you aren't necessarily going to commit to something that takes more time.


    Koans are actually used to maintain one's focus on the buddha nature 24/7. Maybe not your cup of tea if it is tweet sized memes that you crave.


   I like your attitude bra. Aloha.

(gassho)

​​​​​​​

Hi,
this is a lovely memoir by poet & zen practitioner Henry Shukman. A personal account of a lifetime of practice and transformation.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46015894-one-blade-of-grass
The audiobook version, read by the author, is really neat, I'd recommend it heartily.
Also, the author has a series of lectures, I think actually something like an audio course, available on Sam Harris' waking up app and/maybe other places too. I haven't checked that out but it might be useful. Hope this is relevant.

Two hands clap!!! What the hell is going on?

Che: XD 

(Are emojis banned here or something?)

...

Balint:

Thank you for sharing! Even if I don't get around to it, maybe it'll help a wandering internet denizen one day!

...

Terry:


Thanks for the links! My potential to read list has blown up recently, lol.

...

Regarding dualistic thinking, my approach has been to inhabit dualism when it feels useful (I know that's already dualistic, but that's dualism for you!), and nondualism when it feels like a safe environment, and I have the wits to remember (both parts steadily improving).

I feel that it's best to retain the ability to move between, but that you then must cultivate wisdom about when and how to do that. That feeling can and does change.

I will admit I'm not precisely a buddhist, but I'm definitely a fan!

Maybe one could see it more as integration and simultaneous dual and nondual being? I admit I don't know what would be best, so I remain flexible.

...

Regarding Current Cravings:

A lot of my reading happens on my phone, and I tend to keep like 3 books actively going depending on my mood. So like right now I'm reading Moon in a Dew Drop, and The Book of Lies, and just dipped into Austin Osman Spare's Book of Pleasure.

All of those benefit from longer periods of focus, though The Book of Lies is also in little pieces. But sometimes I'm mentally a bit tired, or it isn't a larger block of time. Sometimes I'm in a social situation where the norm is for people to be on their phones, and there's no need for me to rock the boat. I'm well aware of how I act online, but IRL it's not hard for me to be "just another nerd." People know I "write about art theory," which is both true, and enough to not make things too weird, since I'll happily chat art if someone inquires.

So it's cool to have a book of short poems or something easier to read to serve that sort of entertainment that someone might fill with scrolling social media. 101 Zen Stories seems like it fits that niche!

It's just nice to have variety!

But also yes, I publish grimoires in/about an open source magickal language that assumes baseline experience resembles some of Daniel Ingram's descriptions of jhanas 6-8. I seem to have skipped 2-4 until very recently, lol.

How much can one sapir whorf themself 24/7 perception of buddhanature or post abyss understanding?

This language, vaibbahk, allows you to create new suffixes which assume different metaphysical assumptions too, so it's easy for it to grow along with the personal developments of each speaker creating their own dialects. I'm aware that doesn't keep one from straying, but I also don't want to dictate a single path. People have varying lives.

I feel it helps a little, at a minimum as a reminder to shift back into those ways of seeing/being. I think you still need the appropriate ritual/meditation experience to make that shift, but a language and corpus of art texts which affirm that way of being can help get the rational mind harmonious with it, even if the rational mind cannot enter as rationality.

But also one must ask, what would be the best things to make magickally powerful art about. Because vaibbahk can be equally spoken through all media (I use the phonetic, glyphic, postural, musical, and body altar orthographies), it lets you interweave all sense into total art, and every element contains its esoteric connotations. Too bad about Wagner though.

So yeah, koans appear to be used for something basically like what I'm aiming for, but from the opposite direction of my aesthetic maximalism. 

I've already been doing the epic prose poem shtick for a few years, so it makes sense that I can engage different clusters of mental processes with micro literature too.

Plus if that's more how people these days engage with text and image, maybe it could be effective for a larger audience, or for the same audience in different ways? It feels right to express these things in ways which flow with new communication norms, as long as it's in the spirit of goodwill. I am currently happily aware that I am casting these spells upon myself one thousandfold when I commit to making them into a grimoire, and not just a plain english explanation of techniques, though I include those as well.

[The ideas of the brahma viharas have swiftly been edited into the draft of the next book, lol.]

If I had a reasonably intelligent AI model of Mcluhan, I would read it's engagements with these ideas, you know?

In lieu of that, I'll inject koans into my word-mind during periods where I read other seemingly useful and relevant texts so that the juxtapositions in my subconscious guide me in the general intended direction. It's a bit like training a large language model.

I've enjoyed our exchange too!

as bodhidharma said, zen is:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters.
By pointing directly to [one's] mind,
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.



koans, like haikus, do appear to aim for some aesthetic minimalism

and one arrives at silence by practice


this mind itself is buddha

from the tao te ching, trans stephen mitchell


47
Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.

48
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can't be gained by interfering.

have a cup of tea!

every piece of meat in this shop is the best!

I suppose the interesting detail here is that artistic works cannot really contain Silence, except in the superficial sense.

And while aesthetic mininalism is seemingly closer to silence, for a householder, Silence must ultimately be experienced while among the chaos of streets.

Is it perhaps more direct for those of us already among chaos to find Silence through excitatory, rather than inhibitory, means?

But there are many ways to not know words. To add their meanings until they burst.If the force of life is already so far alongPerhaps better to just push through the topAnd fall back to elevated force
To maintain momentum
Among worlds who demand
And to hear the Silence in between

And the Silence does not rest upon words
But the words can launch you throughout 

My recent AI image prompts all contain:
"Fractal neural networks who are"
Where we are
Interpenetrating 
every note noting

In vaibbahk, to Window is to emphasize a particular way of seeing the world (a "dialectic")
And so one musn't look through "their" Window
To see the All-Process, "oibidz"
I mustn't call it "the tao"
And neither should one "call" it "oibidz"
Because that calling is just one window.

And some may wish to draw all the Blinds
And others to open all the Windows at once

But of course the Silence isn't-
All of the Windows open or closed.
It's what was already happening after.

Is it better for a householder
To be skillful at not doing any thing
Or bounteous doings all at once?
Until finally you arrive at non-action,
Where no-thing is done,
no-thing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained
by going in The Way things are
It can't be gained without existence

contrariwise...



rumi, from feeling the shoulder of the lion


Some comment on the text, We created man and woman
in the best physical and mental proportion,
and then We reduced them to the lowest of the low.

The garden beauty, to which the angels bowed down,
after a time, was dragged by the hair
by Gabriel and led out.

Why? Why was paradise lost?
Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?
Why does every beautiful face grow in old age
wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?
Why does a full head of hair get bald?
Why is the tall, straight figure
that divided the ranks like a spear
now bent almost double?

The bright-red anemone grows saffron.
Lion strength weakens to nothing.
The wrestler who could hold anyone down
is led out with two people supporting him,
their shoulders under his arms.

These are all messages from the fall.
What fault was committed?

God answers,
                       “The crime is
that they put on borrowed robes
and pretended they were theirs.

I take the beautiful clothes back,
so that you will learn the robe
of appearance is only a loan.”

The sheaf-stack belongs to God.
Human beings are gleaners.
Rays from the sun.

The earth-colored glass
makes everything seem diverse,
but that glass eventually shatters.

Your lamp was lit from another lamp.
All God wants is your gratitude for that.

Lend, is the divine command.
Make God a loan from your existence,
and see what fortunes accumulate!

Diminish a little, for your own sake,
all this eating and drinking, and watch
a new basin fill in front of you.

Then God may say, “Death, 
give back what you took.”

But you’ll turn away.
You won’t want those things.

Sufis throw away their wanting and their objects.
They abandon pieces of clothing in the dance,
and those articles are never returned.

They are given to the singer,
or divided among the dancers.

They arise from a briny, annihilating 
ocean into pure clarity.

They confront the world openly with its arrogance
and its hypocrisy. They are warriors 
for non-existence.

The planter works with the most joy
whose barn is completely empty,
the planter who works for that 
​​​​​​​which has not appeared.

Second by second I know you’re expecting
some sure understanding, some spiritual perception,
some peace, but I am not allowed to say
more about this mystery,

or else I would create a Baghdad 
in the wilds of the Georgia mountains
and there would be no more doubting!

from the diamond sutra


'Subhuti, what do you think? Can the Tathagata be seen by means of His
bodily form?'
'No, World Honoured One, the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of His
bodily form. Why? Because when the Tathagata speaks of bodily form, it is not
(real) form.'
The Buddha said to Subhuti: 'Everything with form is unreal; if all forms are seen as unreal, the Tathagata will be perceived.'




from the tao te ching, trans yutang

​​​​​​​1. On the Absolute Tao

The Tao the can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given
Are not Absolute Names.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of All Things.

Therefore:
Oftentimes, one strips oneself of passion
In order to see the Secret of Life;
Oftentimes, one regards life with passion,
In order to see its manifest forms.

These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same;
They are given different names
When they become manifest.

They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret of All Life.

more or less


all use of words
is bragging
more or less

all use of words
indicate silence
more or less

some get the moon
some get the finger
​​​​​​​more or less

Amen.

​​​​​​​