Sometimes koans present us with images and descriptions that are strange and mysterious while at the same time seeming familiar and personal. Keeping company with and exploring these resonances, we can find many facets touching into and speaking to our lives and experiences, unlocking and releasing a deep wisdom and freedom that has always been. As we kept company with the koan below, one person found a troubling tangle from her day suddenly gone, resolved, and a sense of ease opening up; another found a long-forgotten memory from childhood arising, reconnecting him with an inherent sense of sufficiency and abundance; and someone else noticed how she seems to be continually buoyed along somehow, with all that she needs always readily at hand, available and accessible whenever reached for.
So meet the koan for yourself, let the episode here nourish and encourage you as you journey along together, and see what you discover being unlocked, opened, and freed.
In a well no one dug
water ripples from a spring that doesn't flow.
Someone with no shadow or form
is drawing the water.
-Ikkyu