Root Koan

In this course we take a modern minimalist approach to awakening and enlightenment. Being awakened, we are aware of the nature of experience, the processes of phenomenological arising from feeling to perception to knowing, and the non-existence of the self. Being awakened, we have shifted feeling, perception and knowing from their habituated expressions to their stillpoints: compassionate equanimity, emptiness, and active inquiry. Being awakened, we have become the ultimate seeker.

Awakening is unpacking experience. Enlightenment is hacking experience.

Compassionate equanimity is the fruition of the mahayana, and emptiness is the fruition of the hinayana. These are the two most familiar aspects of the awakened state. It is the vajrayana, however, that is the doorstep to enlightenment. It begins with a kind of skepticism and carries the taste of risk. Traditionally, the vajrayana practice involves adopting a Buddha family and visualizing ones self as a deity.

In this modern minimalist approach, we will adopt a root koan, as the iconic point of our  own examination, and work it thoroughly to its bones, down to its crystalline structure.