Koans of the Way of Reality: Changsha’s Illusory Thinking

Inconceivably Wondrous

Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi

Featured in Mountain Record 26.1, Fall 2007

The Main Case

Changsha was once asked by Government’s Secretary Du, “When you chop an earthworm into two pieces, both pieces keep moving. I wonder, in which piece is the buddha nature?”
Changsha said, “Don’t have illusory thoughts.”
Du said, “How are we to understand [...]

T’ang Ch’an and the Myth of Bodhidharma

FROM A PAPER BY:
Albert Welter

A special transmission outside the
scriptures;
No dependence upon words and letters;
Direct pointing to the soul of man:
Seeing into one’s own nature and
attainment of
Buddhahood
Bodhidharma, First Patriarch of Zen (4-6 Cent. AD)

Ch’an Master Ta-hui Tsung-kao and Kung-an Zen

Ta-hui Tsung-kao and Kung-an Ch’an
By Chun-Fang Yu
Journal of Chinese Philosophy
V. 6 (1979)
pp. 211-235
Copyright 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Co.

A biography of Chan master Ta-hui and a discussion of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao[a] (1089-1163) was a monk belonging to the Lin-chi school of Ch’an Buddhism. He was the 12th generation heir of [...]

Han Shan Te-ch’ing Mountain Living: Twenty Poems

I.
down beneath the pines
a few thatched huts
before my eyes
everywhere blue mountains
and where the sun and moon
restless rise and fall
this old white cloud
idly comes and goes.

The Comparative Phenomenology of Japanese Painting and Zen

Clarence Shute
(Clarence Shute is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Massachusetts.)
Philosophy East and West
Copyright by University of Hawaii Press
INTRODUCTION
SINCE “PHENOMENOLOGY” COVERS a wide variety of complex theories, I shall indicate the few features of the method which will be involved in this paper and which derive from Edmund Husserl’s book Ideas. I shall indicate [...]

Quotations of the Great Zen Master Han Shan Te’-Ch’ing

Han Shan Te’-Ch’ing (1546 - 1623)

He was a Buddhist monk, abbot, scholar, teacher, and poet.
He was a Buddhist leader in the Ming Dynasty
He is sometimes referred to as “Silly Mountain.”
Name variants: Han-Shan Te’-Ch’ing, Shrama-na Han-Shan De-Ching,
Sramana Te Ch’ing, Hanshan Deqing, Han shan Te-ching.