What's your original face
before your mother and father were born?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
What can you do when you can do nothing?
What time would it be if all clocks stopped?
How is it that someone who plunges into the sea
and counts all the sands
is sitting on top of a needle?
How will you step up
from the top of a hundred-foot flagpole?
How do you go straight ahead
on a narrow mountain path
which has ninety-three curves?
How is it that someone who plunges into the sea
and counts all the sands
is sitting on top of a needle?
How will you step up
from the top of a hundred-foot flagpole?
How do you go straight ahead
on a narrow mountain path
which has ninety-three curves?
It is like a water buffalo (an ox) that passes through a window screen.
Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through.
Why can’t the tail pass through?
Do you see the rabbit's horn?
Do you see the rabbit's horn?
What is the straight within the bent?
When you set yourself free of life and death,
you should know your ultimate destination.
So when the four elements separate,
where will you go?
When the many are reduced to the One,
to what is the One reduced?
to what is the One reduced?
******
To see into the koan
we must see into ourselves.
-Albert Low
only one koan matters
you
-Ikkyu
we must see into ourselves.
-Albert Low
only one koan matters
you
-Ikkyu
