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The myriad things return to the one. Where does the one return to? Barry Magid October 1st 2016

Voices, the dog barking, traffic, are all just sound. Worries, fears, daydreams, fantasies, are all just thought. Sound and thought are all just this. If we are aware of something existing as it is, in this way, then we experience it's perfection or completeness. Each thing perfectly occupies the space allotted to it. This silence is not the presence of something, but the absence of something - self centeredness, judgments and comparisons. It's very tempting when we encounter the absolute to put a capital letter on it and think we've encountered something. Zen recognizes this as a particular type of sickness we are liable to that this koan is intended to cure. We have to be reminded that what we've encountered is all these myriad things in the first place. The quality of perfect immediacy is not a property of the absolute, it's a property of the table, of the barking dog. It's not that we've peeked behind the curtain, but we're now in a certain way in a relationship to things and ourselves.

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The Blue Cliff Record, Case 45 Joshu's Cloth Robe

A monk asked Joshu, The myriad things return to the one. Where does the one return to?
Joshu replied, Once when I lived in the province of Sei, I made a cloth shirt for myself. It weighed seven pounds.

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