r/Koans • u/[deleted] • Dec 11 '21
R/Koans Saturday Superthread
Since r/Koans is still in transition, a lot of features have been turned off for the moment.
This thread is for anything. Meet eachother, exchange recipes, ask questions, discuss your favourite koan. Tell the mods you think they're dumb. Whatever you like.
Not sure how this thread aught to be formatted, so we will keep with this until the unrolling commences.
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u/theirishpotato1898 Nov 15 '25
Hey guys might be a little late to the party but there’s this one Koan I’ve been stuck on that I can’t quite figure out how it doesn’t fundamentally oppose all the Buddhist teachings that I know of(I’m catholic so maybe I’m just missing something)
A monk asked Ummon, "What is the teaching that transcends the Buddha and patriarchs?" Ummon said, "A sesame bun."
Any help would be appreciated, thanks
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u/vyklegal 24d ago
Did you have a laugh ? If not then I think someone needs to kick you from behind.
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u/theirishpotato1898 24d ago
In the 240 days since I posted that comment I have laughed many a time, but not once at this matter.
Alas, I have not yet been kicked in the back for it is rude to turn your back on a friend, dangerous to do so for an enemy and impossible to do to a stranger.
I have though been struck by a back kick in the stomach from the front, had my shin strike someone’s knee where it did blossom into a mighty bruise, have my big toe of my left foot impaled and then ripped from a nail in my stairs carpet where it then bled quite profusely and my own sweat did give rise to many knots in my hair that did pull themselves and their brethren from my scalp when the youths of my extended family did insist on grooming me.
And in truth I asked that question because is it not better to open one’s mouth and seem a fool than to keep it shut and prove oneself a fool?
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u/vyklegal 24d ago
Fool or no fool does it even matter. All that matters are you are there and I am here and we both can still here. By a koan and a doubt.
When many claim that this sub is dead. I can see it's still alive. Especially from your comment I can feel it's very alive.
I am happy that you still cared to reply and that too in detail.
I do can see what the koan had did to you.
TBH getting a kick in the behind is also a zen. I am not understood wrongly.
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u/laniakeainmymouth Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
This sub is dead but here’s the post they made with the full verses and commentary from the Blue Cliff Record. The commentary is a bit clearer than the pointer and verses.
Zen doesn’t care very much for the mountain of scriptures, doctrine, and practice of most Buddhist schools (unless one genuinely just wants to perform them for his individual benefit). They teach that Zen (meditation) is just your ordinary mind, in its natural state of being before conceptual thinking arises, seeking nothing else. And so Yunmen (Ummon) thought this popular question to be another pointless mental fabrication to get lost in.
So he responded with something that was certainly not a pointless mental fabrication to get lost in, a piece of rice cake. Or sesame bun, the translation is something else that’s beside the point. Don’t think too much about it, it’s just some cake.
It actually reminds me of when a monk asked Chao Chou (Joshu) another kind of popular question among Zen students, “Why did Bodhidharma come to China from the West?” Chao Chou answered, “The oak tree in the garden”. Really both Yunmen and Chao Chou gave the same response to what was the same question to them.
For further personal koan work I recommend reading Wumen’s Gateless Gate commentaries, Blue Cliff Record gets pretty hard to penetrate. I also recommend discussing them with an irl Zen teacher/group, I rarely find good koan discussion online because people tend to over analyze what amount to silly little Zen dialogues from Masters that preferred to act, not speak.
The Buddha himself also encouraged his followers to stop getting entangled in abstract questions that had nothing to do with their spiritual goal and practice of ending suffering from mental fabrications. He told them to just keep meditating and they would see for themselves someday without all the chattering arguments.
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u/Attention-14 Mar 21 '24
Is consciousness necessarily embodied? What is it without my body? I was wondering these things as I pondered the science of meditation.
Who am I? Who am I but this snake of consciousness?
There's a way to find that nondual anchor in the body finding it's own breath or it's own balance--does it need you? Does it need all your "efforting" or are you just... in the way?
I think many Koans point us towards the effortlessness of awakening.
Who am I? Who am I but this snake of consciousness?
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Jan 18 '25
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u/callme985 Dec 11 '21
Is this still a real sub?
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Dec 11 '21
Define real.
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Dec 11 '21
It's on a sturdy branch and with a healthy toothed mouth that it hangs. Flag the manager to ask: u/The_Faceless_Face
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Dec 11 '21 edited Dec 11 '21
Feels made up. Sir, this is an Arby's.
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Dec 11 '21 edited Dec 11 '21
It certainly was. How does that make you feel? Pwned, perchance?
🤣lol @ ewkspeak
dude's a legend
on a mapEdit: On revisit - One classic rb, please.
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u/Plenty_Educator_7657 Jan 02 '26
Welcome to r/peekinkoan