"Longya's Thief in an Empty Room" from Eihei Dogen's 300 Koan Shobogenzo

The Main Case - A monastic asked Zen master Judan of Longya (Zhankong), "When do the teachers of old get stuck?" Longya said, "When the thief slips into an empty room."

Capping verse - When the mind is empty, the eyes are finally clear. Shining through detachment and subtlety--the root of creation.


Just to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding between you, the reader, and myself, the writer, I’ll make it clear right off the bat: for me, ideas, concepts, and theory are not methods for acquiring objective knowledge but rather catalysts for subjective experience of life; my life; anyone's life. While I admit I’m not averse to being able to posit a thesis that many can agree on, what’s more important to me is to instigate reflection. Similar to the manner in which a koan operates, activating consciousness of premises, assumptions, and prejudices in a dialectic process leading to the emptiness of knowing, so I hope to illuminate my subjects, not by shedding light on them, but by casting shadows, tracing their forms in darkness, in silhouette relief, to know them only by inference, by what they are not. My tools? Arbitrarily constructed in language and consciously divided for the sake of an intellectual pursuit: my mind (reason and awareness), my body (instinct and corporeality), and my spirit (presence and desire).

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Koan - Two dancers

Two dancers faced each other, intending to move in unison. One of them suddenly ran off quickly into the distance.
The other dancer called to him, “I thought we were moving together.”
Just before disappearing on the horizon, the first dancer replied, “Aren’t we?”


There are lies that we tell ourselves in order to maintain a false clarity, and there are those that we spin around the heads of others. True unison, or harmony beyond unison, is not a parallel, mirror, or inverse image. There is no measure for this. The dancer fading into obscurity beyond the horizon is the one we wanted to be. Who he is once he disappears is the dancer we will become. History, memory, and the future become one.


Forget what you know. Remember what you must.
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