Kong-an #1

Reply with your first reaction to the following before reading on:

"My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes."

This is the first kong-an I chose to write about because it's followed me as long as I've been studying Zen Buddhism. It's never felt particularly difficult, but the best kong-ans don't. They just remind you, hundreds of times, that you didn't understand them as deeply as you thought you did.

The meaning that my mind attached to immediately was that we tell each other more with our eyes than we do with the words that accompany them. If your goal is to convey the fire in your heart, your eyes must not tell another story.

This particular kong-an also taught me another important lesson. "in spite of what is going on inside, see clearly". With that meaning, it can become a mantra to repeat to yourself to induce calm, or at least beg yourself to find another way when you can't find calm. I mention it in my first post about my poor decisions:

https://steemit.com/life/@sileni/poor-decisions-1-the-places-you-find-yourself

One of the joys of Zen is that every person who hears a kong-an finds different meaning. What's yours? And what does that say about you?