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Category: koan

In Zen Buddhism, enigmatic or paradoxical questions used by teachers to develop students’ intuition. Also refers to religious problems encountered in daily life.

  • Live in work

    Live in love
    And do your work;
    Make amends of your sorrows;
    For just as the jasmine
    Releases and lets fall
    Its withered flowers,
    Let fall willfulness and hatred.

    – The Dharmapada

  • The Journey

    Do not feel overwhelmed by the length of this journey.
    All you ever need do is focus on one thing,
    what you are doing.

    Stay on the path,
    put one foot in front of the other
    – that is all.

    There is joy in the struggle.

    – PT Sudo

  • The Moon Emerging

  • River

    You never step in the same river twice.

  • Beginner Mind

    so the most difficult thing
    is always to keep
    your beginner’s mind….

    If you start to practice zazen,
    you will begin to appreciate
    your beginner’s mind.

    It is the secret

  • Where can dust fall?

    Neither is there Bodhi-tree,
    Nor yet a mirror bright;
    Since in reality all is void,
    Whereon can the dust fall?

    – Hui Neng (638-713)

  • The Search for the Bull

    In the pasture of the world,
    I endlessly push aside the tall
    Grasses in search of the bull.
    Following unnamed rivers,
    Lost upon the interpenetrating
    Paths of distant mountains,
    My strength failing
    And my vitality exhausted,
    I cannot find the bull.
    I only hear locusts chirring
    Through the forest at night.

    – Kakuan (1100-1200)

  • Staff and Sandals

    Now cold, now warm;
    Staff and sandals
    Sometimes home,
    Sometimes out.

    – Chugan Engetsu

  • Gibbon

    A lone gibbon howls on the ridge.
    What else do I cherish?

    – Cold Mountain

  • Rivers at last.