A. Master: “It is not the shape of male or female.”
Commentary:
Don’t measure others by your yardstick.
It is the shape of male and female.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathawa
Category: Koan
Q291. Student: “How can I become one with the universe?”
A. Master: “You should melt everything and make it you.”
Student: “How can I do it?”
Master: “Make yourself melt into air.”
Commentary:
When there is no ‘I’, there is nothing that is not ‘I’.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q288. Student: “You always say that everything including mountains and rivers is an illusion. What is not an illusion?”
Master: “Mountains and rivers.”
Commentary:
Mountains and rivers block your insight into mountains and rivers.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q285. Student: “You always say that everything within sight is the true-self. How can you show it to me?”
A. Master: “Am I not within your sight?”
Commentary:
Why can’t the student see what is within his sight even though there is no barrier between them?
Instead, put up a barrier and he will see it.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q283. Sometimes you say that we should remove all illusions, but sometimes you say there is nothing that is not the true-self. How can this be?
A. It’s true that everything is the true-self and there is nothing that is not the true-self. However, it is also true that everything is an illusion and there is nothing that is not an illusion. To remove illusions doesn’t mean to detach illusions from the true-self and throw them away to a remote place. If you happen to think this way, you are going in the opposite direction away from your goal because you separate illusions from the true-self and make them two.
As we have mentioned many times, the purpose of Zen meditation is to realise oneness or non-duality. Jesus also said, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male is not male nor the female female; then will you enter the kingdom.” To remove illusions means to realise the truth that all illusions are the true-self and both of them are one. Therefore, when we are not enlightened, that is, when we can’t see things as they are, everything is an illusion, but when we are enlightened, there is nothing that is not the true-self.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q282. Student: “When only one of your shoes is left, where has the other gone?”
A. Master: “Scattered.”
Commentary:
Scattered, scattered.
How clear it is!
One swallowed the other.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q271. What does the phrase ‘You should neither hold on to the meaning of the Sutras nor let go of it’ mean?
A. Holding on to the meaning of the Sutras means keeping the words without perfect understanding, in other words keeping food undigested in the stomach. Letting go of it means to ignore and forget it. For better understanding, let’s take the following as an example.
Buddha had a student who was notorious for having killed many people and even tried to kill Buddha before becoming a monk. One day this monk happened to visit one of Buddha’s lay students, when his wife was having a hard time being in labour. The layman said to the monk, “Please relieve my wife of this terrible suffering with your power.” The monk responded, “I still don’t have such divine power. I will go and ask my master, Buddha for this favour for your wife.” Upon returning to Buddha, the monk explained the situation and asked him what he should do. Buddha answered, “You go back to the house, and tell her that you have never killed anyone.” The monk did as he was told to, and then, on hearing his words, she was relieved of her suffering.
This metaphor implies that everything is empty.
When Buddha said to his disciple, “Tell her that you have never killed anyone”, he meant that whatever bad and cruel things, or whatever good and beautiful things we may do, they are all empty, so the young monk’s murder was also empty. He likened her childbirth to the young monk’s murder. The woman in labour, on hearing what the monk said, realised the truth that the suffering she was going through was also empty, just as the murders the monk committed were empty.
We should understand what the Sutras say, in the same way that the woman in labour understood Buddha’s remark passed on by his student. The moment she heard Buddha’s message, she made it part of herself. If she had ignored, let go of the message or remembered it only as a meaningful saying, or held on to the meaning of it, she couldn’t have been relieved of her suffering.
Master: “What did Buddha tell his student to say to the woman in labour?”
Student: “He told him to say, ‘I’ve never killed anyone’.”
Master: “Why did Buddha tell him to say so?”
Student: “Because He wanted to teach her that everything is empty.”
Master: “You are still holding on to the meaning of Buddha’s teaching.”
Student: “Then, what did He say?”
Master: “He didn’t say anything, and his student didn’t go to her house.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q270. Student: “Are the birds in the tree singing or crying?”
A. Master: “Why don’t you ask yourself?”
Commentary:
They are laughing at you.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q267. Student: “What is the matter when the gate won’t open, however hard I try to open it?”
A. Master: “It’s already open”
Commentary:
If you stick to ‘open’, it’s already locked.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q265. What am I when my body is not me?
A. Remove all the labels attached to you by others. Remove all words that can describe your identity. Let’s suppose you are a sixty-year-old British man named John who is living in London. When you say that you were born in London sixty years ago, what is left when all the labels are removed? ‘You’ or ‘I’, ‘were born’, ‘in London’, ‘sixty’, ‘years’ and ‘ago’ all are labels. You still have a lot of labels to represent your identity such as your parents, your job, your school records and so on. You think that you are human being, which is also an artificially coined label. Remove all artificial labels and see what is left, whatever it is. That’s it. What is it?
Master: “What is left now?”
Student: “Nothing is left.”
Master: “If nothing were left, what would be saying, ‘Nothing is left’?”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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