🎧 Ryūge Passes the Chin Rest: When Even "No Meaning" Becomes a Trap
Series: Dharma Talks from One River Zen
Speaker: Sensei Michael Brunner
Koan Source: Book of Equanimity, Case 80

🪷 Episode Summary:
Ryūge asks the same question twice and gets struck twice. His response? “There’s still no meaning in the Patriarch’s coming from the West.” But what if even that response is still part of the trap?

In this talk, Sensei Michael explores how we turn realization into a fixed stance—how we cling to the language of awakening instead of living it. Through the lens of Case 80, we examine how subtle grasping masquerades as freedom, and how the Dharma keeps working on us, even when we think we’ve figured it out.

🔍 Topics Covered:
– Ryūge’s karmic repetition and the illusion of insight
– How “no meaning” can become a new doctrine
– The power of spontaneous action over conceptual understanding
– Why real freedom leaves nothing to declare
– The difference between answering and responding
– What finally opens Ryūge—and what might open us

📚 Key Koan:
Book of Equanimity, Case 80 – “Ryūge Passes the Chin Rest”

🧘 Practice Invitation:
Where in your life are you still trying to “name the void”?
Where have you turned insight into identity?

💬 Favorite Line:

“You can’t draw a picture of a strawberry and eat it.”

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