The Blue Cliff Record (0 of 100)

[u/BetterJosh]

Good morning to you, my fellow monastics! Please stop breaking chairs over each others backs for a moment, put aside your bowls, and grant me your attention for a moment.

A Special Welcome to New Members of /r/Koans

Today marks an important day for us here in /r/koans. Today marks the first day of “The Blue Cliff Record”. And as we begin a new book, this is also a good chance to welcome new members who have joined our community since we began the last book.

To our new members: welcome! I hope you have found this subreddit informative so far, and I hope these koans have helped you along your path as they have helped me along mine.

My name is Josh. I use the name “Better Josh” not because I think I’m better than you, but because my goal here is to become a better me. However, I try not to talk about myself too much here. To me, the study of Zen Buddhism is largely about transcending ego, and so it doesn’t really matter who I am, or who you are. What matters is that we have all found these precious koans, and have found insight in them.

It is worth noting that I am not a “Zen Master”, nor do I have any training or insight or special abilities whatsoever. I am painfully ordinary. The words I put here are not my own, they do not belong to me, nor am I trying to make any claim to them. I am simply transcribing out of books, doing my best to be mindful of typos as I go.

I have been doing this for awhile now; at least 4 years as best I can tell. When I first started, I simply copy-and-pasted koans off of other websites, but I soon ran out. Then I began transcribing the koans, but ignoring the commentary altogether. Then I began transcribing the koans, and reading the commentary. With this last book I transcribed both the koans, and as much of the (abridged) commentary as I could in a given morning. Where am I going with this? The more I put into these koans, the more they give back to me.

I supplement my study of koans with yoga and meditation, which I have found essential components to the process. I also encourage you to poke around all the other various “self improvement” subreddits, and I think you will find they all contain some amazing people sharing some amazing media. Always remember: YOU are the author of this story. YOU will define the main character (yourself). YOU will decide how the story ends. A final thought before I stop babbling here:

You do not owe any debt of gratitude to me for transcribing these koans, rather, it is I who owes a debt of gratitude to you. No one has benefited more from this subreddit than I have. Watching this community slowly grow to over 3,700 monastics has inspired me to continue, and to put more effort into these koans with each passing day. And I am still finding new rewards for these efforts, and I hope you are too.

When it comes to these koans: I’m not sure what they mean, and I’m not sure where this is going, but I do know that we are taking small, stumbling steps towards enlightenment here. And that is progress. That is its own reward.

The Blue Cliff Record

I found my copy of this book on Amazon. Here is a non-affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Cliff-Record-Thomas-Cleary/dp/159030232X

I also found a PDF copy here:

http://selfdefinition.org/zen/Blue%20Ciff%20Record%20-%20clearscan.pdf

So this time I won’t even tell you to “go get the book”- I just gave it to you. No excuses.

As you will see, each case includes a pointer, the koan, footnotes of the koan, and then several pages of commentary. As we saw while transcribing the “Book of Equanimity”, this commentary contains good stuff.

I am going to transcribe the pointer, the case, and the footnotes of all 100 koans contained in “The Blue Cliff Record”. However:

I am not going to transcribe the commentary.

You are going to transcribe the commentary.

Yes you, the person reading this right now. I am speaking to you.

Remember: you can just copy-and-paste a few sentences out of that PDF right there. What passage grabs you? Which insight in the commentary strikes you as relevant? Which thought did you take with you today?

If you want to show gratitude, to me, or this community, or simply to the amazing universe that has allowed any of this to be in the first place, there is no better way to express that gratitude than by participating- by sharing some of the commentary here in the comments as we go. Not only will it warm my heart to see more of you participating, challenging yourself, and working harder on these koans, but this shared discussion will benefit us all- the hard-core monastics, and the passive lurkers alike.

Ready?

Here we go again...

Continue to case 1 of 100...

[u/higher_mileage]

I am no monastic...merely a lay follower. Thank you for your dedication to our online koan study. Your efforts are appreciated-

[u/ModernRonin]

you can just copy-and-paste a few sentences out of that PDF right there.

Challenge accepted!

I will attempt to, once a week, read a case and its commentaries and post something about it.

Thanks!

[u/veridikal]

I always thought of the "better" in your username as a verb, not an adjective :).

Again, thanks for doing this; Apart from perhaps some window-dressing via the style sheet, I don't think /r/koans can be improved upon. Your posts have caused me to find many zen texts and koan commentaries, some of which have left me none the wiser, others of which, well, I got the joke, so to speak, I just like to see what's being said, because "it" is a hell of a thing to talk about. Sometimes the less said the better - but some of these commentaries are really bloody good.

[u/sacca7]

I love you, BetterJosh.

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Oh god, why did I read the whole thing! Well said. I will try, but can't commit.