Koans, for almost everyone will, eventually, become like a dry bone on a dry cattle range for a hungry dog.
I remember many years ago at my dad’s ranch watching a dog gnawing on a sun bleached cow’s bone. He kept gnawing on it and gnawing on it. He wouldn’t let up in his effort to get the marrow out of it.
Truth be told, the dog’s nose wasn’t lying, the scent of marrow was still there, but there was nothing in this bone that could satisfy the dog’s great hunger.
When tackling koans our intellect is not unlike the hungry dog that has found a dry bone. Here’s an example.
A monk asked, "How does one escape hot and cold?
"Why not go where it is neither hot nor cold?" said Zen master Dongshan.
"What sort of place is neither hot nor cold?" asked the monk.
"When it's cold, you freeze to death; when it's hot, you swelter to death," replied Dongshan.
Dongshan, in one respect, threw all the Zen students in the future (our dogs) a dry bone. You can envision these students gnawing on this bone. But something tells them that no matter how many times they gnaw on this particular koan, their gut isn’t being filled. They still don’t know their Buddha-nature.
But the dirty little secret of the koan, looking at Dognshan’s response, was intended to hook the student’s intellect then, hopefully, bring it into great doubt, this being, the loss of one’s confidence in the conceptual and intellectual approach to realizing one’s true nature.
In this bone of a response by Dongshan, there is just enough marrow to hook the intellect. The dog (i.e., the intellect) will eventually starve itself to death gnawing away, madly. Then in the great death we will see what truly gives eternal life.
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