Kigaku Noah Roen: Blue Cliff Record, Case 80 – A Newborn Baby

‘First, we braid grasses and play tug of war;

then we take turns singing and keeping a kickball in the air.

I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing,

time is forgotten the hours fly.

People passing by point at me and laugh,

‘why are you acting like such a fool’.

I nod my head and don’t answer.

I could say something, but why?

Do you know what’s in my heart?

From the beginning of time,

‘just this, just this’.

With this Ryokan poem, Hoshi Kigaku Noah Roen ends his Dharma talk exploring the Blue Cliff Record 80, A New Born Baby. A timely koan in Kigaku’s life, just a week shy of his baby’s expected birth. In his inquiry, Kigaku gives us both science’s view on baby consciousness, the zen literature’s oft-referenced views on ‘…being like a child, like a newborn’ and his own anticipation and excitement to encounter this new consciousness.