Author: Manuela Dunn
Call Number: 294.3443 K75 1996
Book Description from amazon.com
This beautifully illustrated small book contains some of the most profound and inspiring koans excerpted from two of the classics of Zen literature: "The Gateless Gate", and "The Blue Cliff Records", along with dozens of full-color reproductions of classic Eastern paintings and a comprehensive introduction.
My Read:
Reading this small book brings back memory of a time when I read books of koans in Chinese. Allow me to share Case 40-Tipping Over a Vase from "The Gateless Gate"-page 35:
Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his disciples that whoever answered a question mostly ably would be appointed. Placing a water vase on the ground, he asked, "Who can say what this is without calling its name?" The chief monk said, "No one can call it a wooden shoe." Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his food and went out. Hyakujo smiled and said, " The chief monk loses." And Isan became the master of the new monastery.
Footnote: The truth, her symbolized by the water vase, can not either be told nor not be told. It can only be shown. Isan, a monk who studied with Hyakujo for twenty years, made a striking demonstration of this teaching.
Reading Koans also reminds me of Aesop's Fables. We love stories. Reading abstract ideas or concepts bores us sometimes. But teaching with story telling interests us and interesting things stay with us and last longer. Case study books intrigue me more than contexts of explanations and descriptions.
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