Study Hall - Shobogenzo

It seems like a treat to have an hour scheduled for study every day during the intensive, even if I usually do that by myself anyway. There is something about going to the dining room with a simple purpose, to sit quietly and read - except that most of the intensive participants did not know what was involved in study hall, and I sent them away to get dharma books to read. It also seems like I will get to the end of the Shobogenzo in the next couple of weeks, and I wonder what I will pick up after that. Today's fascicle is 'Four Horses', 'Shime', which of course has a resonance with my dharma name, though frankly, given how I came to Buddhism, I feel more like the last kind of horse than the first kind. And in case you are wondering, it felt disruptive to bring my laptop downstairs, so I am back in my room typing.
"Ancestor Nagarjuna said, 'When a phrase of guidance is spoken, an excellent horse sees a shadow of the whip and gets to the right path'.
To encounter various situations and hear the dharma of birth and beyond birth, and the teaching on the Three Vehicles and the One Vehicle is to see a shadow of the whip and get to the right path, instead of the common tendency to follow the wrong path.
When you follow a master and encounter a true person, there is no place a guiding phrase is not presented; there is no moment when you don't see a shadow of the whip. Whether you see a shadow of the whip right away, or after innumerable eons, you are able to enter the right path".