Quotes from teisho are run sequentially in the eMirror
Photograph of Chinju-ki, 2004, over Dainen-ji taken by Rev. Jido Comeau anagarika
This evening the moon is almost full, bright right through the clouds. Tomorrow evening will be the Harvest Moon of Chinju-ki but this O-sesshin will end before then.
Zhaozhou and the opening lines of the Xinxin Ming appear again in the Hekiganroku in Case 57, Case 58, and Case 59. The cases are not connected in the sense of a developing story and so these three cases are not like a trilogy but are more like a triptych, in this case showing the same thing from three different perspectives. What we see is Zhaozhou's point of view and how he embodies the Vast Way in his interactions. In these cases we see students approaching the Master to engage in "hossen" or "Dharma combat".
The tradition of Dharma combat is one in which a student or a master approaches another with a question or statement that expresses their own understanding and realization of Zen. This is unlike kien-mondo or a question and answer encounter as the intent is not so much to ask a question and receive an answer but rather definitely one of putting oneself forward, exposing oneself, and challenging the other. This was not a matter of a debate in which the argument is won by marshalling facts or supporting evidence or through more consistent logic. The purpose of hossen was to sharpen one's understanding and one's ability to express it not only verbally but in one's deportment as a whole. While it might seem in such stories as if students are sometimes being rather rude, and certainly the Teachers can sometimes seem extremely stern or brutal, these were just the rules of that ancient game in the Tang and early Song dynasties.
Many koan consist of records of such hossen and are used in koan study in which a formal student studies the koan intimately within their own practice and with their Teacher in daisan or dokusan. This provides an opportunity for the student to learn many things about how they confuse themselves, how to see into a situation from different perspectives, to understand the relevant view and so themselves come to the same understanding that Teachers and students have come to for hundreds of years, and how to express that understanding in a kind of playful performance. Koan study is a rigorous course in learning how to think rather than just have thoughts. It is also an opportunity for deep study of various aspects of the Dharma and for the student to not only deepen their understanding but begin to take responsibility for that understanding through expressing it.
- Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi, concluding teisho 24: Three Cases of Zhaozhou part one (Hekiganroku 57, 58, 59) from the series "Without Difficulty: Commentaries on Jianzhi Sengcan's Xinxin Ming: Words on Trusting Awareness,” Thursday, October 5th, 2006. (If strange characters instead of 漢字 hanji or kanji appear this means that you need to enable UTF-8 in your Character Encoding settings.)