Bring Me The Rhinoceros And Other Zen Koans To Bring You Joy

CHAPTER 1 Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, "What is the main point of this holy teaching?" "Vast emptiness, nothing holy," said Bodhidharma. "Who are you, standing in front of me?" asked the emperor. "I do not know," said Bodhidharma. The emperor didn't understand. Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River and went to the kingdom of Wei. Later, the emperor raised this matter with his advisor, Duke Zhi. The advisor asked, "Your Majesty, do you know who that Indian sage was?" "No I don't," said the emperor. "That was Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, carrying the seal of the Buddha's heart and mind." The emperor felt a sudden regret and said, "Send a messenger to call him back." Duke Zhi told him, "Your Majesty, even if everyone in the kingdom went after him he wouldn't return." FORGETTING WHO YOU ARE AND MAKING USE OF NOTHING To study the Buddha's way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by ten thousand things. Eihei Dogen Poetry arrived to look for me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or river, I don't know how or when, No there weren't voices, there weren't words, or silence. Pablo Neruda If you are in a tight spot and nothing has worked, you probably think that you need a transcendent piece of wisdom to rely on. You might think that you need a foothold or a handhold. You might think that you need to improve yourself or your skills in some way. Here is a koan that suggests another possibility: the way through might be by not improving yourself and not finding a railing to take hold of. Here is a koan about how the way through can appear naturally if you are open to it taking an unfamiliar shape. This koan also contains the legend about how this understanding was brought to China from India. The Koan Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness Emperor Wu had two unusual experiences that changed his life. These essentially inward events led him to certain achievements that are remembered today, more than a millennium after his death. The first experience happened when his armies had to repel an invasion of horsemen from the northwest. The horsemen carried with them whatever they owned, and they weren't afraid to die. The emperor had himself ascended to the throne in the standard way, by overthrowing the previous, weakened monarch, and he believed that he understood the riders. To steady his troops he visited the front lines and sat in the firelight on a small hill. This is when the emperor had his first peculiar experience. Banners whipped loudly overhead and the wind felt as though it were inside his chest, tearing and banging. Something of the desert's tedious immensity was conveyed to him. The wind cleansed him of any anxiety and also took away other things the solidity of which he had never questioned before. It took away his august rank and his name. He stopped planning, and he also stopped thinking about the outcome of the battle. When everything he usually depended upon was gone, he knew immediately what to do. In the predawn, just before the nomads liked to attack, he sent horsemen into the center of their camp and immediately pulled them back again. As the pursuit came, the center of his line kept falling back. The nomads rode into the vacuum he had opened and he closed on them from both sides. After his return, while the ministers celebrated, the emperor went into the garden to be alone. On the hillside, he had felt quite certain that he was going to win. At that moment, in the wind and the vast land, he was small and unimportant, and this sense of his unimportanceTarrant, John J. is the author of 'Bring Me The Rhinoceros And Other Zen Koans To Bring You Joy', published 0016 under ISBN 9781400047642 and ISBN 1400047641.