“Clearly I have seen: no person, no Buddha, not one thing. And what is it after all? Nothing special. Just this, just this.” Yamada Koun Roshi
Description: Koan
A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Joshu answered, “Mu.”
Traditionally the first talk during a sesshin is about the great “barrier koan” Mu. That’s what this talk focuses upon. Henry asks, How do we forget the self? It’s not that the self disappears and somehow “I” remain; it’s the entire “I” or “me” that disappears, and a much greater openness to everybody and everything appears. Henry shows how the koan Mu supports us in letting go of this sense of “I” which is at the core of our habitual, conditioned experience of reality. The subject, the “I”, dissolves; then, what Mu actually is can show itself. Mu simply asks us to give up all notion of what we are doing so that a “marvelous clarity” can open.
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Featured Image Credit: Crimson Canopy, by Ian Sane, CC BY 2.0.