Peel of Orange #2

Koan:

Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.

What can we really deliver? What can I bring today?

Peel of Orange #1

Koan:

Bring me the peel of orange you ate yesterday.

I seem to be feeling around for my pillow in the dark...and not finding it. Where am I, in yesterday or in today?

When the World was Created #3

Koan:

When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?

The second I refer to “I,” a messy duality is born. Maybe I should adopt a pronoun like “they.” Sometimes with these koans I feel like screaming, “Stop messing with me!”

When the World was Created #2

Koan:

When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?

It makes sense that the head is so big in this drawing because I was so full of my head. Why didn't I see that I was simply being born, one moment ago?

When the World was Created #1

Koan:

When the world was created, what was god (the creator) like?

I should have sympathy for those parts of my brain that are activated by such questions. Why haven't they learned to simply ask the body? So I guess I'm blaming them a little, like I might blame a kid who raises his hand in class to answer a question and who always misses the point.

A Hungry Ghost

Koan:

Save a Hungry Ghost

Yesterday I thought about how the fulfillment of a desire doesn't end craving. Maybe it does for the first few bites, but then we start worrying about how much the ice cream cost, or whether it will make us fatter, or whether it will give us cavities. So we can't even enjoy the ice cream. Or we might, and then instantly start craving something else. Hunger isn't ended by feeding. Suffering is caused by craving, but is ended by other means than eating (i.e., the Eightfold Path).

River #2

Koan:

Stop the fighting across the river.

This is a great lesson on what I can do. And hopefully, if I stop fighting, there will be a little less war.

River #1

Koan:

Stop the fighting across the River.

I'm surprised how agitated I appear in the drawing. Now it is almost six months after I drew this, and I see myself as the one with the peace [sic] pipe and the man sleeping on the beach as the one I'd like to be. I tried to represent the fighting as a bunch of twisted branches in a fire. I wish I could stop the fighting. And I wonder whether the fighting is really occurring.

Ol' Monk

Koan:

Without using your hands, make this old priest get up.”

I was on the phone with a grammar school and high school classmate earlier today. I asked him if he saw himself as an old person, being almost 80. He kept saying, “That's a really good question.” I said, ”Growing up, we'd call someone who was almost 80 old." “Yes,” he replied.

Thinking of these koans as tricky puzzles is where I go wrong. Better to be naive and uncomplicated.

Siblings #2

Koan:

The girl over there, is she the elder or the younger sister? If the student is a woman: That guy over there, is he the younger or older brother?

Gradually I've been learning that there really is no “over there.” Photographers say that the subject of a photograph is the photographer. Perhaps the subject of a koan is the reader.

Siblings #1

Koan:

Gradually I've been learning that there really is no “over there.” Photographers say that the subject of a photograph is the photographer. Perhaps the subject of a koan is the reader. The girl over there, is she the elder or the younger sister? If the student is a woman: That guy over there, is he the younger or older brother?”

This suggested a little suspicion (paranoia?) in me when I jumped to the conclusion that maybe someone was trying to fool me, like the kid who sold me a two-headed nickel, only to discover it had been soldered together. Koans are another lesson to exhibit curiosity rather than jumping to conclusions.

Sailboat

Koan:

How do you become one with a sailboat?”

Hsin Hsin Ming: “...in this ‘not two’ nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded.” In the storm, one feels part of the boat as it rocks violently from side to side.

An Immovable Tree

Koan:

Show me an immovable tree in a heavy storm.

I like the paradox of an immovable tree in a heavy story. It reminds me of Suzuki Roshi's statement that if it isn't a paradox it isn't true. And, also of the story about the man in the hut who is unmoved by the beautiful woman. Is either possible? And yet, we can try to be a rock that is firmly set in the ground even when the earth is shaking.

The Sounds of the World #3

Koan:

Become one with the sounds of the world.

After being married to my imagination for 3/4+ of a century, I'm having trouble not doing that. When I try to become one with the sounds of the world, I have no trouble imagining horrific and pleasurable sounds (the sirens) from the past present* and future. But what about dropping the stories and just being with the sounds themselves in this moment?

Buzzing, Rain on Roof, Wife's TV, Phone Ringing, More Buzzing, Clipboard Hitting Table, Coffee Mug Making Noise As Lifted Out From Holder

[With] Each with these I drop self and hear sound.

*—Sometimes I think there is no present because it is a moment so short that it doesn't even exist in time.

The Sounds of the World #2

Koan:

Become one with the sounds of the world.

What came together today was shikantaza (just sitting), buddha fields, and the world. All are just this... whatever is right here right now (as the cliché goes). Sound is sound, but it is also any phenomenon that creates a sensation [IMHO]. The five-clouded world is on top of my ear. It is exploding my ear drum. Someday it might be so quiet that I could hear a pin drop [which I've never heard [yet].

The Sounds of the World #1

Koan:

Become one with the sounds of the world.

Opps. 6 fingers. Earth on 5 GIANT cloudy day. Buddha Dharma Sangha (3 treasures).

They told us in school [with a straight face] what was the world. It wasn't where I road my bike [in the alley]. I heard sirens and saw Patty the One-arm who had a difficult birth. She reminded us how privileged we all were. I can still see her every day walking down the street...always alone, with one arm dangling. [Next life I'll buy her a milkshake at Walgreens.]

My first intensive was at a Vietnamese monastery. I asked if you can be in the present thinking about past. A monk took an hour to answer me. He said yes, you could.

A Distant Temple Bell #2

Koan:

Become one with the sound of a distant temple bell.

I am the bell. It was distant until I heard it & then I stepped into the bell [gingerly] and got showered with the sound and the vibration of the bell jiggled jiggling me thru & thru [actually more times than the sands of the Ganges]. Soon there was a dharma talk and the words didn't stop [hearing the peal of the hammer before, during, and after] but permeated through the pores of skin making & shaking all my cells as the talk rained over me. I didn't listen in the same way that the fish don't know they are in water until they aren't.

A Distant Temple Bell #1

Koan:

Become one with the sound of a distant temple bell.

I was misconstruing “embodied” to mean taking something inside oneself. So I put my nocelf [sic] inside a classic 8734 model Acme kasket [sic]. Then I was really isolated from the sound of the distant temple bell. So I created a spirit to rise out of the casket to become one with the sound. God is looking on. She is not thrilled with this strategy. It is good that I'm smoking a pipe in the casket becuase then the spirit could come from the smoke. First thing I bought when I went to college was a pipe and tobacco. I had just turned 17 and I was going to be grown up.

Mu #5

Koan:

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
Joshu answered, “Mu!”

Photons don’t reveal themselves until they connect with phenomenon. Just like light, buddha nature must be everywhere and every time, but it needs phenomenon to reveal itself. If mu is anywhere it must be everywhere, always. A mist. The buddhafield. Kind of like sweat.

Mu #4

Koan:

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
Joshu answered, “Mu!”

I've been told that there is just one buddha nature. Yet here it is just within me and my pup, with a sky of negative buddha nature. But what about the ground? And the trees? If buddha nature is anywhere, it has got to be everywhere. And I must remember that my everywhere is not your everywhere. One buddha nature but many everywheres.

Mu #3

Koan:

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
Joshu answered, “Mu!”

I merged with my dog. We were full of MT, so to speak. But we were isolated from everything else. Which is being alone. It didn't feel right.

Mu #1 and #2

Koan:

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”
Joshu answered, “Mu!”

[Mu is the negative symbol in Chinese, meaning “No thing” or “Nay.”]

Years ago my teacher was telling us about Buddha-nature and I innocently asked [having two dogs] if dogs have Buddha-nature. He didn't answer, but subsequently on many occasions told me that I was too discursive.

1) I told my koan teacher that mu was stuck in my gut. He failed me, of course. I was adjusting to the fact that I'd fail each week I met with him and that would be fine. XLax didn't help either. Mu was stuck... like a hard rock.

2) By the next week I was imagining that I was in a mu-storm and it penetrated through me. I remember the song from the year we were married (1969), “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” I was happy with mu flowing through me. And still I failed. There was still a dualism of me and mu.

The cool thing about koan study is that if someone told you the “answer” you'd still fail. Knowing about love or even the secret of a good relationship doesn't insure anything. Reading about going to Paris isn't the same as going to Paris. How does one have an experience of mu? Paris was easier.

Koan Puzzles Intro for book

An older cousin, Larry, who lived with us for a time, remembered that my dad was always giving us puzzles. There were a few puzzles I couldn’t solve. One was why no one could understand my speech. What was wrong with them, I thought? And the second was about death. What was that about? Was it something to fear? Why did my parents say that "life was for the living" and if we made the right decisions no harm would come to us. I liked math and especially word problems. They were my favorite pastime.

Fast forward to Zen. My first teacher told us that everything has Buddha Nature. Not knowing Mu, but having a couple of dogs, I asked him if dogs had Buddha Nature. He made a somewhat odd expression but kindly didn’t say, “that’s your first koan.”

Then I did a sesshin with a Rinzai zen teacher. The koan was, “What is this?” and time after time I was rung out before I could barely open my mouth. Why couldn’t I figure out this apparently simple koan?

I did take a koan class or two or three. One priest-to-be in the class seemed to get them. I couldn’t understand what they were about. They seemed to be esoteric and to rely on a holy grail with which I wasn’t familiar.

When I was head student I picked what seemed like a simple koan, only to discover that there are no simple koans. And to also discover that they are all simple. Suzuki Roshi said if it isn’t a paradox it isn’t true. Yesterday I asked our head student if there were any simple questions. I haven't found one yet. Maybe I'm coming to realize that I, not the question or koan, make questions difficult.

The koan I chose was the one where Buddha holds up a flower and Kassapa smiles. Every day I did a drawing with words about this koan and ended up doing my three head student dharma talks sharing these.

Imagination played a role here. But it wasn’t the imagination of making things up. To the contrary, I was asked once how I reconciled my work to that of the realists… and I responded that I’m a realist. I express what I’m feeling. I don’t like artists who make things up.

Which brings me to my pets. I have a rhino, a penguin, three dogs, and a half dog, half wolf. My wife says that they aren’t real… that they are just in my imagination. I insist that just because she can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t real. Lately she’s been more accepting that they might be real though not visible. Or maybe she’s just trying to humor me.

It was about a year ago when I made the web site for the Lay Zen Teachers Association. I worked with Al Rappaport and saw that he’d been teaching koans for a number of years. For about six months I’ve been working with him, meeting him weekly.

He started out asking me where I felt the koan in my body. I didn’t respond well to this but it did suggest that the koans weren’t discursive puzzles to figure out. I've discovered how I feel about things by looking at my drawings of them. In fact, as I started to look at some of the first drawings that I did of the koans, I saw that I had been expressing more than what I realized at the time.

Another of my teachers, Flint Sparks, would ask, “How simple are you willing to let it be?” It is quite amazing to me all the words spoken and written about Buddhism. And all the words about art. I remember in college doing a paper on Robert Frost and liking what he said when asked to explain one of his poems, “do you want me to tell you in other and worse language?” I feel that way about my drawings. However, for almost 60 years I have had a lot of words in my pictures. In fact, one of my painting/lithography teachers would tell me to get the words out of my pieces. I gave him one of my pieces with words and he hung it in the hallway of his house.

What was Buddha saying when he held up a flower? Kassapa got it with a smile. The other monks didn’t. It wasn’t that Buddha had a well-trained and discursive mind equal to few others. Rather, when he really had to say something profound, he held up a flower. Likewise, when Kassapa responded with a smile, he said more than all the grains of sand in the Ganges River.

My commentary below the drawings was written after the drawing was made. I saw things in the drawings that I didn’t initially see. Al would have me act out my response to the koan. Sometimes he would say, “You have it in the drawing.” So then I’d look again at the drawing and let my drawing speak to me.

Boyfriend

Rhinoceros Fan (an infamous koan)

One day Yanguan called to his attendant, "Bring me the rhinoceros fan."
The attendant said, "The fan is broken."
Yanguan said, "Then bring me the rhinoceros!"
The attendant had no reply.
Zifu drew a circle and wrote the word "rhino" inside it.

This is No Other

Dialogue with Charlie

Are You Enlightened?

JOKO BECK had finished a talk and asked if there were any questions. A young man raised his hand and bluntly asked, “Are you enlightened?” Her response was immediate. Laughing, she said, “I hope I should never have such a thought!”

Moon, Susan. The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women (p. 41). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.

Joshua, 1980

Anatomy Lesson and Love

Receiving and Giving

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?"
Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"

The Lotus in Muddy Water

May we exist like a lotus, at home in the muddy water. Thus we bow to life as it is.

Skateboard Mishap

I thought he'd be all right on a skateboard. I was wrong.

Untitled 11/16/23

Pumpkins and Horse

Clouds and Cat

Still

Why?

Neighbor's Lizard

Hand of God

Collaboration with Joseph Mallord William Turner

Caveman art on the floor of HEB grocery in Austin

Lotus From Muddy Water. Piatt County Nursing Home, Monticello, Illinois

LOVE

Little Orphan Annie

 

Cookie

Distress... and Joy

Being Born Human

What's the Form

The Rarity of Being Born Human

Power