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Koan
With 191 days remaining until the year 2000, during the Plum Village delegation’s trip comprising 182 practitioners in China, the image of a novice monk sweeping leaves while listening to a cassette tape at Bailin Temple opens up a discussion on how to practice mindfulness. Sweeping the courtyard, cooking rice, or washing dishes is just as sacred as sitting meditation or chanting if we invest 100% of our mind into it, instead of dividing our attention with entertainment or running away from reality. The secret of meditation is “One thing at a time,” investing our full attention into every step or action in the present moment to get in touch with the wonders of life, just like the story of Zen Master Zhaozhou pointing to the cypress tree in the courtyard to lead his disciples out of the realm of conceptual thinking.
The concept of Living Zen needs to be expressed through the substance of continuous practice in all daily activities rather than just being theory, meeting the modern person’s need to stop and smile. The history of the Zen school records the development from the dialogues of patriarchs like Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch Huineng to the formation of koans (public cases), huatou, and hymning the gongan. Works such as the Blue Cliff Record emerged; however, getting lost in esoteric literature instead of facing actual suffering was criticized by Zen masters like Phat Nhat, and this was also the reason why the Thao Duong Zen school in Vietnam did not last long.
Famous huatou such as “The ten thousand dharmas return to the One, where does the One return to?” or “Who is reciting the Buddha’s name?” all revolve around the theme of Who and need to be nourished by a daily life of mindfulness. In Plum Village, koans are unlocked using the basic keys of the Buddha’s teachings to resolve real suffering:
- The key of impermanence
- The key of nonself
- The key of interbeing