What is Zen? How to Read and Reflect on Zen Koans?
Questioner: Dear Acharya Ji, Pranam. Since we have started this month with Zen Koans, I have a few basic questions for my understanding.
A. What is Zen? B. How to read and reflect on Zen Koans? C. What is Zen practice or meditation?
Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: Zen is that which happens when you read the Zen Koans. Now see, you say that this month we have started with the Koans, and yet the Koans are nowhere in your question. You are asking about the Koans, you are asking about Zen, and you are missing the center. And whenever you do not want to enter that thing directly and instead prefer to go round about and round about and round about, as they say, beating about the bush, then you obviously miss.
Zen does not consist of asking about Zen. When the Koans are in front of you, go to them simply, directly, like an inquisitive, wondering child or like a desperate lover. Both of them have a certain directness. They do not have roundabout ways.
So, what is Zen?
Zen is that which happens when, instead of asking about Zen, you directly enter the Koan. So you missed Zen.
How to read, reflect on Zen Koans?
Just as you read the English, French, German, Sanskrit or Hindi language. What do you mean by ‘how to read?’ How does anybody read? But the ‘how to’ is a great way to not to read. Do you see how you can use the ‘how to’s’ as a handy intervention against even the most simple of happenings?
I can ask you something as simple as picking up this handkerchief from the table, and you can come up with a series of endless ‘how to’s’ to delay that which is straightforward and easy and obvious. How to read the Koans? Just as you read anything else.
And let me tell you, you cannot read the Koans if you do not know the very knack of reading. You cannot be a lousy reader throughout the day and then pick up a compilation of Koans and be totally somebody else.
If you are a seeker of clarity, if you do not mind getting a few rude hits, then the Koans are for you.
But if you are someone who is very touchy, very prickly, very easily offended, someone who is looking forward to, almost wishing to, receive hurt, then you cannot become a very tolerant and resilient mind suddenly, just when you go to the Koans.
The Koans do not pamper you. They do not display the kind of behavior and kindness and gentleness that you might be accustomed to, that you might expect in a so-called spiritual environment. The Koans often leave you flabbergasted. You do not know what has happened. And you will have a point if you say that you came to Zen for clarity, not for more confusion.
The Koans can tie a hundred knots around you and within you. So you need to have a taste for wonderment, a taste for disillusionment. Then the Koans will appear delicious. But if you just want to be dealt with child gloves and spoon-fed, then there is very little for you in the Zen way.
Zen hardly provides you with any answers. It rather delivers jolt after jolt that wakes you out of the entire Q&A paradigm. So do not ask me, ‘How to read and reflect on Zen Koans?’ Ask me, ‘How to be eligible for the Zen way?’ Are you getting it? If you are not the Zen kind, then the Koans will just be an alien irritation for you. Somebody from Jupiter came, pricked you in the behind, and disappeared, that’s what the Koans would be for you: both alien and irritating.
You should be somebody who should be prepared to live in uncertainty and inconclusiveness. If you are someone who is a sucker for definiteness, then you will get nothing definite with the Koans. Are you getting it?
Koans are not for the one who is looking for support. If you have support of some kind and they do not suffice, so you are coming to Zen to get a better and bigger support, you better protect what you already have. You will not get anything bigger or better here.
Zen is the territory of great robbers. You will be robbed of whatever support you already have, and you will turn bitter. You'll remember it as such a bad expedition, a deal gone grossly sour. You wanted more, and you lost whatever little you had.
In Zen there are no concepts, no definitions, no learnings, no teachings. Once I said, ‘Zen is the highest point of all religious ascension.’ Why? Because there is nothing here. What is there at a point? Nothing. It has an absolute vacancy — no area, no capacity, no volume, no existence. That is Zen.
So, if you are living Zen, then the Koans will be good entertainment, and I'm using that word with enough discretion. If you are living Zen, then Koans would be good entertainment, the weekend flick. But if you are someone who is not living Zen and then you come to a Zen master, or Koans, or the Zen practice, then you should be forewarned. You could be rubbed the wrong way, and it can be a very harsh rub.
Zen masters are known for being eccentric. Anything can happen. There are no methods there because the destination is immediate. If the destination is immediate, then the shortest route is taken, and the shortest route is now: do something immediately in this moment that awakens the disciple promptly, immediately. At the same time, Zen seekers have been known to practice for years and decades. Again you are disappointed, finally you are coming to something definite about Zen, and that too didn’t happen.
What is Zen practice or Zen meditation?
Zen practice is to be concerned with the Koans when they are in front of you and not bother about the definition of a Koan. Zen practice is to be able to approach a thing without knowing its definition. Zen practice is to look at something the tenth time and still not know anything about it. Zen practice is to be brave and not avoid the assault that the practice launches on you.
When the Koans rain, go out and dance. Do not sit in a shelter trying to analyze the precipitation — what is it that comes down, and why, and with what kind of velocity? If it comes down, why did it go up in the first place? Such queries have no place in Zen.
Zen practice is to read a Koan forty times and still learn very little about it. Then read it another forty times and still learn very little about it. And having read the Koan eighty times, you attend Acharya Prashant’s session and forget the little that you had learned.
I will talk about them not because they are explicable, but because it is good fun to talk on Zen. And in the Zen way, one may as well talk on a beautiful cucumber or a rotten watermelon just as one talks on a Koan — rather senselessly and meaninglessly.
But my friends sitting here would not listen to me if I start talking about cucumbers and watermelons. ‘Okay, just cucumber.’ And the bugger even got the pronunciation wrong. Look at, like a gwala, he says cacambar. So now what? Tell me ‘cucumber.’ So that would be good fun, but then you would not accept that as a session. So we have to rather take the Koans.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, my life is becoming more and more clear after I have come across you. Thank you so much.
I have a long pending question to ask. In a few scriptures across various religions, they say that very few people who are self-realized can actually hold or contain their body. What does it actually mean, and can you please throw some light on it? Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: First of all, there is nothing to realize. What do you want to realize? What temptation is there? What target is there? Realization is much like what is happening here right now. You ask me about realization and I say there is nothing to realize.
Realization is a breaking down of the concepts about everything, including realization.
In some sense, those you are calling realized were the ones who unrealized.
Somebody once asked me, ‘What is enlightenment?’ I said, ‘Unbecoming unenlightened.’
Realization is your essential nature, and that nature means nothing. That nature is neither solid nor liquid. That nature is not hot nor cold. That nature is not beautiful, not ugly. That nature is not expansive, not limited.
You can just keep wondering, but you will never get to describe what your nature is. But you pick a lot of rubbish along the way in your journey through time and various places, spaces. You pick this, you pick that, and you fill up an empty space. Realization is about doing away with the dirt, getting rid of the rubbish. So it is quite simple and ordinary.
Now you're asking, you have heard that very few people who are realized can actually hold or contain their body. Would a realized one say all this: 'I am finding it difficult to hold or contain my body?’
The body is a physical instrument. The body is a product of Prakriti. The body is a machine that operates on its own. What does the realized one have to do with the body? His relationship with the body is purely accidental. Nothing essential connects him with the body, just as nothing essential connects him with the universe. So he lives birthlessly and deathlessly. Born — nothing special. Died — nothing special. Nothing essential happened at the time of birth, and nothing essential would happen at the time of death.
There is a tree on the earth. A flower appears on the tree. The flower turns into a fruit. The fruit gets ripe and big, juicy and luscious bright yellow mango. And then one day the fruit falls.
What does the sky have to do with all of this? The sky is watching. Yes, the tree, the flower, the fruit, the earth, all have a relationship with the sky. The fruit is in the sky. And that's the relationship. All this keeps happening. The sky remains the sky. And if there is soil, there would be trees. And if there are trees, there would be flowers. And the flowers will get pollinated, and they will turn into fruits, and one day the fruits will fall.
What does the clear sky have to do with all this? Does he go and stop the fruit from ripening? Or does the clear sky go and force the fruit to fall earlier than usual?
If the clear sky does not force the fruit to fall earlier than usual, then why are you saying that the realized ones find it difficult to contain the body? The body will continue its processes. The fruit will do what fruits do. The sky will be what the sky is. That's the body and the realized one.
Are the two connected? Obviously. Is there fruit without the sky? But fruits come and go, the sky remains. Does the sky get nervous when the fruit is about to fall? Yes, the fruit is about to fall, and the sky starts raining tears for you. That's the relationship of the realized one with the body.
The sky is overseeing the fruit. The realized one is overseeing the body, overseeing in a very, very non-physical way. Have you ever seen the sky have eyes? So it's a very non-physical seeing. The trouble with the word ‘seeing’ or ‘witnessing’ is that you start conflating it with manual and physical seeing, envisioning.
What is the meaning of witnessing in spirituality? Witnessing is that which happens between the sky and the fruit. Is it happening at all? You could even say that it is not even happening. Witnessing is something that doesn’t happen. Are you getting it?
The assumption behind your question, is that the body has some relation with enlightenment. You still want to see the enlightened one as a body. So you are saying, what do the enlightened ones do with their body? They do nothing with their body. If the body lives, the body lives. If the body falls, the body falls. They do nothing with anything. Are you getting it?
Are they eager to live on? No. Are they eager to give up the body? No. Are they? no. When they are not, how can they have eagerness?
The body is a cute toy. Existence is full of toys. And these toys keep playing with each other. Why would anyone want to forcibly destroy the toy? Let it be there as long as it is there — one day anyway it has to fall. See, let him be there. But we are so obsessed with mangoes that to us the sky is worthless. Why? It has no juice. It is in the sky and due to the sky that existence is juicy. But the sky itself has not much to do with juice.
Does that gladden you? Does that disappoint you? Figure out.
There are just too many mango lovers who have never thanked the sky.
