ok, I've been thinking about this a lot since I started my practice, and especially with recent posts of the koan where you are hanging from a tree by your teeth. If you answer it's one thing, if you don't it's another. Or as Jundo said, (and I'm paraphrasing) things are perfect as they are, but some things need to be tended to "no thing and some things to maintain" or "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form". I think these are pointing to the same thing, and you may be saying "duh, of course" right now. lol

It's like all of my practice so far has come down to this pattern... this duality I'm trying to get out of, but that's the conundrum. My mind thinks dualistically, which is good because that is my interface to reality. Yet if I take this duality to be the sum of what everything really means then that's the point of suffering.

And so I think like Stephanie said in an earlier post this koans are like roadsigns on practice. The more and longer I practice, it's not necessarily the answer but how Iunderstand the question that will help me.

Ok, so this relates to the self because it's that duality again: self or no self. There is no self separate from the universe, but there is a self in the sense that I am not you. We are 2 people, but we are connected in this universe.

When talking or thinking about no-self I get really confused but I think it's somewhere in the middle of no self and a self. Yes you exist, but you are not separate. Is that the right understanding (still right/wrong thinking I guess)?