In the koan, Case 48 of the Wumen-kuan collection of koans, a monk asks Kan-feng, “the exalted saints of the ten directions have one straight road to nirvana: I wonder where that road is.” Kan- feng lifted up his staff and drew a line in the air and said, “here
Huang-po, instructing the community, said:‘All of you people are gobblers of dregs; if you go on travelling around this way, where will you meet Today? Don’t you know there is no Zen teacher?’ This is the last teisho of sesshin. Later tomorrow when we go forth in the world, the
Peter takes up two koans that revolve around the primary koan of “Who is Hearing”. Challenging the self to see where we begin and end, we eventually realise it’s not about beginnings or endings at all. There is only one timeless present, sometimes its valley streams, sometimes its rain drops…
I can’t remember enjoying an autumn as much as I have this one. The golden light, the cool freshness of the air, the daily colourful progress of liquid ambers on our street, trees we’d actually never fully taken cognizance of before. The virtue of relative confinement has meant coming to
