Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop
Bop or Fa is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit term “dharma.” More literally, in Chinese, it means “the law.” The character has an interesting etymology: it’s the combination of the character 去, meaning “to go,” with the radical 氵 for water—we might say the three drops on the left represent three drops of water. A poetic interpretation of this character would be the law, or dharma, is like water flowing—a very common metaphor in Chinese thought… [Read more.]

Know Your Characters: Kwon
This character looks more intimidating, doesn’t it? Kwon or Guan means “gate,” “checkpoint,” or “border entry,” as in Zen Master Seung Sahn’s Ten Gates, or the famous collection of kong-ans, the Mu Mon Kwon, which is sometimes translated as “No-Gate Checkpoint,” “Gateless Gate,” “Gateless Barrier,” and so on…[Read more.]

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang
Just like if we sat down to eat and we each had a plain bowl of rice and there was no salt shaker there and you began to develop a negative attitude about the fact that we had to eat the rice with no salt. That would be problematic. Likewise, if someone becomes overly attached to some particular kind of occurrence, whatever it is, that becomes a hindrance… [Read more.]

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN