The Koan for February

Yu Daopo lived in Jinling. She worked in the market square making sweet rice cakes. The Zen teacher Langye Huije tasted them at her shop. He gave her the saying of the Old Master Linji: There is a no-position genuine person.

One day she heard a beggar singing the Lotus Sutra. He said, "if you haven’t heard the story of Liu Yi, how can you find your way to Lake Dongting?” Suddenly she understood.  She threw her rice cake pan onto the ground. Her husband scowled and said, “You are wicked!” Daopo responded, “This is not your realm.” 

She returned to see Langye where he was giving a talk at his temple. He said, “Is anyone here a no-position genuine person?” She immediately answered, “There’s a no-position genuine person with six arms and three heads, working furiously, splitting Flower Mountain in two with a single blow. For ten thousand years the swiftly flowing water didn’t know it was Spring. Eminent teachers, so sharp and quick, have lost it beneath the dark forest of their learning” 

Later she became a famous teacher and when masters and students came to her for her teachings, she called them all “son”

Yu Daopo lived during the Song Dynasty in China, born around the year 1000. Yu was her family name and her teaching name was Daopo which means "Old Lady/Grandma/Hag of the Tao".