White rock Saturday the 4th retreat with William

"The koan path within the Zen Way is yet another whole dimension of play. It's full of that kind of creative, dragonish energy described in the first hexagram of the I Ching, "The Creative"--the electrically charged, dynamic, arousing force of a spring thunderstorm. And yet it is a modest, homely, simple business. Koan work is a fierce, playful form of dressing up in order to stay profoundly at home.

A koan can be a tiny story or a fragment of the record of discourse or encounter between a teacher and a student; or it may be a line from a sutra or a poem, or most simply of all, a vast and simple question, "What is the sound of a single hand?" "What is your original face, before even your parents were born?"  In every case, it defeats the efforts of ordinary consciousness to resolve the questions it raises and we must learn to respond with wide (and wide-awake) awareness, from the depths of our heart-mind."... from Susan Murphy's Upside Down Zen, pg. 45. (Susan's book is a great read and is available in the VIRL.)

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There will be a by donation Chan retreat in White Rock this coming Saturday December the 4th 9:30 to 4:00 p.m. with Willam Tsao, accredited Chan teacher. Email marie Sabine msabine@shaw.ca to register. And of course we will be sitting at the Courtenay Elementary School this Thursday evening.

Also check  out:

Master Cheng Yen in Facebook; 

http://chancommunitycanada.wordpress.com/ 

and the Western Chan Fellowship at http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/

Call Adrian at 250 898 8201,

email adriansymonds@telus.net

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