Questions & Koans

Q. What happens to our soul after we die?

A. What will happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year? There is no one who can answer this question because there is no one who has ever lived even tomorrow not to mention next year.

However, we always make plans not only for tomorrow but also even for decades to come. Why do we get ready for the future despite not knowing what it will be like or what will happen in the future? It is because we believe in cause and effect instinctively. Throughout all our life and history, we have seen, experienced and learned that everything we see and hear is the product of causation. In other words, we have realised that what we are is the effect of how we lived yesterday and how we live today is the cause of what we will be tomorrow.

There is no effect without cause and no cause without effect, and cause and effect has never stopped and will continue forever. This means that how we live today will determine what we will be like tomorrow. For example, we will feel hungry tomorrow morning if we skip dinner this evening, and if we don’t put aside enough money when we are young, we won’t be well off after retirement.

Then, likewise, we can be sure that how we live our present life is the cause of what will happen after death even though we really don’t know exactly what it will be like, because cause and effect is endless.

The purpose of Zen meditation is to help people to enjoy the law of causation instead of struggling against it by realising the essence of it.

Student: “What will you be after death, Sir?”
Master: “A cow.”
Student: “You are an enlightened master. Why do you think you will become a cow?”
Master: “Because there is nothing else.”

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zQPWO

Go and wash your bowl

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me.” Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?” The monk replied, “I have.” “Then,” said Joshu, “Go and wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.

Student: “What did Joshu mean by ‘Go and wash your bowl’?”
Master: “Ask me again.”
Student: “What did he mean by ‘Go and wash your bowl’?”
Master: “You are not aware of the answer because you are looking for the meaning.”

Commentary:
How many times have we been asked ‘Have you eaten lunch?’?
How many times have we been told ‘Go and wash your bowl’?
How many times have we asked the same question to the people around us?
How many times have we told the same thing to our children?
There is nothing else other than what you say and do.
There is nothing else other than what you see and hear.

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zMAQf

Q. How may we see things as they are when we can only ever see things as they appear to be?

A. Don’t think that we see things as they appear to be, but know that we see things in our own way with our own angle of view. In other words, not that we see them as they appear to be, but that they appear to be as we see them.

A good example of our seeing things in our own way is that we have a lot of conflicting views about the same things in our life. We often dislike what others like and like what others don’t like. What is worse, once in a while our views are so conflicting as to cause real conflicts between individuals or nations. All of this happens not because things deceive us but because we deceive ourselves.

In order to see things as they are, you need to see yourself as you are prior to trying to see things as they are because you can see everything as it is only when you can see yourself as you are. Ask yourself what you are when your body is not you whenever you can.

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zdgoi

Q. In the Bible, John 1:14, it says that “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” What does this mean?

A. The ‘Word’ here means emptiness or oneness, and ‘Us’ means forms. The ‘Word’, the ‘Father’ and only ‘Son’ are different names of emptiness that refer to Buddha or the true Self. ‘The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us’ means that Emptiness became form, that is, One became many. ‘We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth’ means that all we have seen are forms from Emptiness, or Oneness.

Student: “If all forms are from the Word, where is the Word from?”
Master: “All forms.”

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/z9dvF

Q. Student: “Where do you think you will go, heaven or hell?”

A. Master: ” Hell, of course.”
Student: “You are enlightened. Why do you go to hell?”
Master: “Because there is nowhere else.”

Commentary:
Don’t avoid hell, because it is where you can repose.
Don’t be attached to heaven, because it is a pool of suffering.
Try to know where you are now.

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/z8hcr

Q. How different is ‘live now’ in Zen from that in mindfulness meditation?

A. I don’t know what they mean by it in mindfulness meditation since I have never practised it. ‘Live now’ in Zen means to live our life without being deluded by the illusion of time which is a typical illusion.

‘Now’ mentioned here is not the word ‘now’ used when referring to past, present and future. The ‘now’ here is the situation where there is no discrimination of time such as past, present and future. Here all words including names are erased and all boundaries disappear since all of them are based on time. For instance, saying ‘there is a house’ means that a house was built in the past. Like this, all names we are accustomed to are from the past. Where are they from when there is no past? Nothing can exist and come into being without the notion of time.

So, when there is no discrimination of time, all illusions based on time disappear by themselves. Then, you realise that you are eternity itself because there is no birth and no death, and you can feel oneness since all boundaries that divide oneness into many like subject and object, you and me and so on disappear. Ancient masters would express the situation by saying, “Everyone and everything is equal and enlightened there.” In summary, living now means living without being deluded by illusions, which is called enlightenment.

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/z8h5h

Q. Why does God steal our happiness?

A. What or who do you think is God? Have you ever seen him stealing your happiness? If you have, you don’t have to believe in and worship him anymore because he is no better than a mean and malicious thief who steals your happiness. What, if you have not, makes you think that God steals your happiness? Don’t make such an assumption, which is to make an illusion. You should know that your problem is that you don’t know who steals what from whom.

You should know that what can be taken from you is not yours and that what you can possess is doomed to be taken from you someday. Ancient masters would say to their students, “Discard all you have because what you can possess is not yours originally and it is doomed to be taken from you someday. Your desire to attain what is not yours and keep it in your possession as long as possible is the cause of suffering.”

Likewise, the happiness that you can possess and lose is not true happiness because it is destined to leave you some day and because it never leaves you without giving you suffering. So, the happiness that God can steal from you is not yours and not true happiness because it results in suffering just like you feel now. True happiness can be felt not when it is possessed by you but only when you become happiness itself.

Student: “What shall I do when God steals my happiness?”
Master: “Keep him under close guard.”
Student: “How could I keep him under guard when he is invisible?”
Master: “Don’t think that he is invisible. He is always showing himself, but you are blind to him. He can’t steal your happiness when you can see him.”

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zpDWT

Q. Why doesn’t the tail go through?

Goso asked, “A water buffalo goes out of its enclosure. The head, the horns, and the four legs go through, but why doesn’t the tail, too?”

Student: “Why doesn’t the tail go through?”
Master: “Because you are holding it firmly now.”

Commentary:
What a poor fellow!
He is worried about the buffalo’s tail, not knowing that he is holding it.
He is laughing at his own reflection in the mirror.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zmSd0

Q. How can we avoid death?

A. If you are to enjoy eternal life without death, you should realise that you are not alive now, because you can’t avoid death as long as you think that you are alive. From the moment we are born, we start to die little by little. To grow means to be dying. ‘I am sixty years old’ means that I have been dying for sixty years. To be dying is the evidence of being alive since non-living things have no death. So, in fact, saying, “I want to live” is the same as saying “I want to die”.

Life is to death as the right is to the left. Wanting to live without death is as paradoxical as wanting to be on the right without the left.

If you don’t want to be on the left, instead of struggling to stick to the right, you should realise that the right and the left are not real things but just imaginary divisions created by an imaginary line. You are neither the right nor the left until you make imaginary divisions. Whether you are the right or the left is not set or fixed from the beginning but depends on your view. When you erase the imaginary line that makes the right and the left, you are not the right and not the left.

Likewise, in order to avoid death, don’t separate yourself from the universe by drawing an imaginary line of ‘I’ but rather identify yourself with the universe by removing the imaginary line. No one can deny the truth that you are part of the universe. The moment you feel oneness with the universe, you also feel free from death and can be sure that you are eternal like the universe because you are the universe itself.

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zhSBQ

Q. Is there anyone who doesn’t die in the world?

A. Yes, there is, but there are few who know him. Those who know him don’t die as well. The truth is that we all die, not because we really die, but because we don’t know that we never die. In other words, we die because we think and believe that we die.

Who doesn’t die? No one never dies. When you become ‘no one’, you don’t die. In order to be ‘no one’, you should know what you are now. To know what you are, remove all the labels attached to you because they are not you. When no label remains attached to you, you become ‘no one’. For example, let’s suppose that you are a man named Tom who was born 50 years ago. Here ‘man’, ‘named’, ‘Tom’, ‘was born’, ’50’, ‘years’, and ‘ago’ are all imaginary labels used to describe your entity, not you. Your problem is to take them for yourself.

First of all, remove the labels ’50 years ago’. What happens? Then the labels, ‘was born’ lose their meaning naturally because ‘was born’ necessarily requires time and place. ‘Was born’ is impossible without time and place. When there is no birth, there is no gender, either. So, the label, ‘man’ also becomes meaningless with ‘Tom’. Then, who or what are you?

When you are perfectly free of the labels, you become ‘no one’. When you become ‘no one’, you will not die because you were not born. Above all, there is no one to die when you are ‘no one’.

Were you alive or dead before birth?
A dead thing never becomes a living thing like you.
Were you nothing or something before birth?
Nothing never becomes something like you.

Student: “Is there anyone who doesn’t die?”
Master: “Yes, there is.”
Student: “Who is it?”
Master: “No body.”
Student: “Who is no body?”
Master: “One who is free of labels.”
Student: “Who is he?”
Master: “Have a cup of tea.”

©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway http://ow.ly/i/zd8gW