Hey, DhO. I don't post on here too often, but there's a question that's been wracking my brain.

In MCTB, in one of the sections where Daniel is talking about insight practices, in particular noting, he mentions that koan training and noting are essentially the same thing (I'm paraphrasing here).

So. I come from a zen background, mainly Rinzai, and I've encountered and worked with koans before. Only thing is, the main teacher at my zen center tends to throw koans at the students without telling them what to do with it. I've asked some of the other teachers what to do with a koan, and I've gotten about four different answers.

I've tried noting. I'm not good at it. I get overwhelmed and find it too cognitive, like I'm trying to stay with the basic senses, but the act of noting compels me to conceptualize and cognize too much, so that I'm more focused on labeling sensations rather than really recognizing them. After a short while, this becomes exhausting.

So here's my question: Exactly how does koan training and noting practice match up? From what I can tell, they almost seem like opposites.

Any insight into this is greatly appreciated.

My two cents, based on a (very) little experience with koans. They have three functions:

1. They test the mind of the student. If you can immediately produce a "correct" answer to a koan you've never heard before, it means you've reached whatever level of understanding / enlightenment that particular koan points to.

2. They serve a purpose for concentration, by interrupting the usual discursive thought processes of the student, eliciting "don't know mind"

3. They serve some kind of insight purpose too, by priming the mind for a particular insight to occur.

Regarding concentration, (2) has a similarity to verbal noting, which also ties up the discursive part of the mind (as I believe Daniel once put it). Regarding insight, because the question can lead you to examine and observe reality in a fresh light, it also serves a similar purpose to observing sensations, as in noting practice.

But I don't know if they're entirely equivalent. It could be that the insights some koans point to aren't available just from observing sensations, or vice-versa.

I don't remember the passage from MCTB, but here are some thoughts:
One parallel between noting an koan practice could be that both are at times experienced as unpleasant, disorienting, jarring, artificial. I don't think this is so by accident. Rather, they both seem to bring out a basic discontent that is associated with perceiving things as they are, which is otherwise obscured by habitualization, distraction, delusion etc. In the case of noting its about all of your sensate reality, in the case of koans it seems to be about conceptual thinking versus bare attention.
Does that relate to your experiences with these practices?

I found it. It's from the chapter on the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, in the first section, on Mindfulness:



So he doesn't say that they're identical, just that they're directly related. From what you guys have said, I guess that would be in the sense that both practices help turn off the discursive mind and see reality directly (frustratingly, that seems to be exactly the opposite of what noting does for me. But then, maybe I'm just doing it wrong).

As far as my personal experiences with koans go, and even though I've had some difficulty figuring out exactly what to do with them, it was a koan that got me into my A&P. But it seems almost to have been a fluke. I asked myself the koan, and instead of trying to figure it out, I surrendered to it. The rest happened automatically. But it was all so sudden and jarring, and frankly a little terrifying, that I don't think I really experienced the clarity of insight that a lot of people on here seem to report after their A&P events. Go figure.

No need to be frustrated, just use whatever techniques suit you best, right now. The point is just to perceive reality clearly, whether it's the 3 characteristics in sensations, or the 5 aggregates, or the 4 elements, or the links of dependent origination, or whatever.

Also, a distinction to make: noting ties up the discursive mind, i.e., occupies it, while a koan (from what I understand) interrupts it with confusion. Samadhi, on the other hand, subdues it (turns it off). I also like Christian's comparison between sensate observation and using koans to interrupt conceptual thinking (as opposed to merely discursive thinking).

If noting isn't working for you, you could also try different types of noting. You can do descriptive noting ("tingling, tightening, softness, brightness, discomfort, scraping, pain, chirping, squeaking, ..."), which requires more cognitive resources, or 6-sense door noting ("thinking, hearing, hearing, seeing, ...") which requires less. Or you can just notice without the words. I've heard that different types are helpful at different stages of practice too, although some teachers might try to have you just use one style.

Take a look at:

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/02/yogi-toolbox-detailed-noting.html

I think everybody customizes their noting techniques for themselves based on reading, experimentation, their own ingenuity, and where they are in their practice.




No problem, your path is your own! Sounds good to me. Keep experimenting, learning. It's trial-and-error.

Once, on a Zen retreat, I tried noting, which I had very little experience with. I was exhausted and quite emotional from my koan work, and looking back I can see that I was "trying out" noting just as a way to avoid dealing with my uncomfortable emotions/doubt. To my amazement, after a couple of days of noting I was feeling much more attuned/attentive/sensitive to physical sensation etc, in a way that I was not used to. Noting, I felt, was really accelerating my progress. As a result, when the obsessive preoccupation with the koan finally resurfaced and became impossible to ignore — this was about 6 days into the retreat — I was paying much greater attention to everything around me, and my own body, and I am pretty convinced that this played a big role in the "resolution" of the koan later on.

Basically, if I had not been so attuned to my environment (which was largely down to the noting) while also being driven crazy by my breaking-down-internal-voice (that moment before the resolution of a koan when your mind seems to just stutter, and stop working properly), I might not have been able to make that jump...