©2005-2025 Mark A. Foote
Twenty-second Case: Hsueh Feng’s Turtle-Nosed Snake
Hsueh Feng taught the assembly saying, ‘On South Mountain there’s a turtle-nosed snake. All of you people must take a good look.’
Ch’ang Ch’ing said, ‘In the hall today there certainly are people who are losing their bodies and their lives.’
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It’s been a revelation for me to read that Kobun Chino Otogawa started sitting the lotus at age 7, wrestled in the lotus with his brothers, and could get in and out of the lotus without using his hands. Of course, his father was the abbot of a Zen temple in Japan.
At the close of a sesshin I attended, Kobun said it was his third sesshin ...
I attended Bonnie Hayes’s show at Sweetwater in Mill Valley a week ago, and when the band played one of her songs particularly well I experienced something about my action that I think will inspire me for awhile. She’s a teacher, yet most people in the hall were not even moving–they didn’t know how to find their feet ...