Shane,
Good to meet you here.
"Who am I" is a famous method of practice. Whether we call it a koan or not is
not too important.
Koans are usually cases or incidents from the doings of famous Ch'an or Zen
masters. The student is asked to "bore into" the koan, and be changed by it,
so as to become it, and to be able to demonstrate the spirit or "content" of
the koan to the teacher, when asked to do so.
When working on "Who am I", I think one can sit down and just intensely desire
to know the answer to this, without letting anything else seep in around the
corners while we inquire. One need not repeat anything in the imagination or
to the mind's ear. Just inquire intensely, while we relax *deeply*.
Another classic way to practice WITH this is instead as a "hua-tou", Chinese
for "head of a word". By "head" is meant the very beginning, before it becomes
a word. So, to turn "Who am I" into a hua-tou, one uses just the "Who", or,
better, the first sound that the word "Who" begins with: "wh", which is like
"h", but it sounds perhaps like "ha", or a choked-off syllable before the word
can get said and be recognized as a word. This "wh" can fill your whole
meditation, if one does not separate oneself from it. If you find you are
separated, it's EASY to return immediately to "wh". In this way, one thought,
or one mind-intention, can last for many minutes or longer.
Hua-tou and koan are just a couple ways of practice, though. There are many.
Usually we stick with just one for some while: months, years, etc., and become
intimate with it. The methods bring us closer to our original mind. Sometimes
the original mind SUDDENLY manifests itself as everything else drops away.
This is the famous "Awakening" of Zen. It is nothing special, but what a
shake-up it causes! Some say it is just coming back to our true home. And I
agree.
I hope you have a teacher and sangha to practice with, as well as practice at
home. A teacher and sangha are essential to learn the methods correctly, and
there is no alternative to this that really works and is safe. Some people
mistakenly think that they can teach themselves. That doesn't work.
--Joe
> "shepherdspie1962" <shepherdspie1962@...> wrote:
>
> In general 'shepherds pies' are gender neutral, but in this case it is a
> 'he'...and his name is not stephen...haha...thanks again for the thoughtful
> replies...I will try to practice more and create concepts less...BTW, someone
> mentioned koans...the priest of the zen group I went to recently said he
> repeats the phrase "who am I" as a form of koan/mantra while
> sitting...hmmm...not sure that really made sense to me as one could probably
> just repeat an actual mantra...and not sure if "who am I" is really a Koan
> either...but to each his own...i suppose the answer is always more doing and
> less thinking...shane
>
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