dharma<\/a> brother, recently introduced me for a talk saying that I was the Katagiri Roshi disciple with the most Rinzai spirit. Or maybe he said that I once had it.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIn any case, I\u2019ve dabbled in koans with several teachers over the years and then recently the opportunity arose to work through the Harada Yasutani koan curriculum with James Myo-on Ford (along with Melissa Blacker and David Rynick too at Boundless Way) and I seized the day.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>I\u2019m very glad I did.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThis crew is among the descendants of Aitken Roshi (although David\u2019s lineage is mainly through George Bowman). I took some koan notes with me to the Boundary Waters that included comments by Aitken and some of his responses to the koans and so I found myself personally touched by his death in a way that I would not have been a few months ago.<\/span><\/span>
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One of the moments that drew me to this group of teachers was a while back when I was offering a workshop at Boundless Way on Zazenshin<\/i>. I got into my usual harangue about how in the modern Zen world koan and shikantaza are regarded as separate practices but for Dogen koan and shikantaza were very intimate.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMelissa jumped in and said that in their system koan and shikantaza were not separate.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThat stole my thunder and led to other conversations that led to my jumping into working with them.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m much in the thick of the study now so what follows are tentative thoughts, of course.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOne of the primary criticisms of koan study made in Soto shikantaza circles is that it focuses on the ugly and evil gaining idea called \u201ckensho.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIt seems to me that kensho is only one little step in the process \u2013 and is neither a gaining idea nor ugly and evil. The vast majority of the first 100 koans (including the various parts and follow-ups) are about actualization of insight.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnd as I\u2019ve rudely said in this blog before, practice-enlightenment without enlightenment (a.k.a., kensho) is often just practice-delusion.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIf we haven\u2019t turned around, how can we practice what we haven\u2019t experienced?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnyhow, I\u2019ve studied Dogen Zen for 30 years and find the koan system to be wonderfully in line with what Dogen actually wrote, although not necessarily in line with many interpretations that are popular today.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nJames has generously supported my wish to offer the koans that I\u2019ve passed through to students and so I\u2019ve begun doing that.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nNext Monday, August 16th, I\u2019ll be giving a talk about koan practice and how it is intimate with shikantaza in Minneapolis at the Heartwood Mindfulness Center, 7:00pm. If there\u2019s interest, I\u2019ll continue offering a class there on Monday nights in the fall on this same theme.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s the change coming on that I hinted at a while back. More later on all this. It\u2019s been a very rich time for me and I hope to offer it to others. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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