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Ekyo's Blog Sharing form the heart
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Joshu is my man! |
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August , 2007 Zen Master Joshu is my favor one. His MU is the most famous, of cause. But also there are many other stories with Joshu’s words in several koan collections. In my practice, whenever I encounter Joshu, I am very excited. I know that koan is going to be difficult to penetrate, very subtle, and requiring struggle… but in the end very liberating. My love for Joshu is also due to his years of practice. Joshu was ordained as monk at the age of eighteen and practiced with a teacher till he was sixty! Imagine, forty two years! Than he did twenty years long pilgrimage, meeting many famous Zen masters and clarifying his own understanding as well as challenging them himself. He started to teach when he was eighty years old. And of cause, he lived very long time, one hundred twenty years. Joshu was a very mature teacher, and a mature human being. Compare this with contemporary times… and contemporary teachers produced in a speedy way. In last sesshin Eido Roshi started to comment on Joshu Roku. This collection has close to six hundred sayings of Joshu. While attending sesshin during next several years I will wait for teisho with great anticipation… The first two teishos were an introduction of Joshu. While talking about Joshu’s life Eido Roshi presented the text, which is the last case from Joshu Roku - A day, or 24 hrs of Joshu’s day. Joshu expressed this probably when he was in his nineties. Roshi was concern that this text may be misunderstood by us, contemporary people, but we all appreciated it very much…. What I remember the most are the words of Joshu: When I was young I wanted to save all suffering beings, now I see how foolish idea this was… Of course we all know that Joshu had a great ability to wake up confused monks using a single word. And the single one, the most powerful still penetrating the universe is Mu!
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