- Normally, one player is selected to start as the Master while the rest are the Students. To keep things more interesting in this online version of the game, all of us will play as Masters and Students simultaneously. (This is similar to how we play Balderdash here.) For simplicity I will describe the rules as if we were having only one Master at a time.
- The Master comes up with a secret rule that some things obey and others do not. The ones which obey the rule are said to "have the Buddha nature." The Master should make sure that his/her rule is clear and unambiguous; he or she should be able to clearly say that any one thing has or does not have the Buddha nature. As a simple example, the Master might come up with a rule saying that living things have the Buddha nature.
- The Master makes a post giving one thing which has the Buddha nature according to his/her rule and another which does not. For ease of reading, the subjects of the koans should be written in bold. Following the previous example, the Master could post, "A fox has the Buddha nature. A stone does not." An example item given by the Master and the declaration of whether it has the Buddha nature is called a koan.
- The Students' objective is to learn the Master's rule. They can converse with the Master in one of three ways:
- A Student can ask the Master whether a particular thing has the Buddha nature. ("Master, does a bear have the Buddha nature?") The Master responds with a koan according to the rule. ("Yes, grasshopper, a bear does have the Buddha nature.")
- A Student may propose a koan which they believe follows the rule. ("Master, I believe that water has the Buddha nature.") The Master responds to a correct koan by giving them a stone or some other token of the Master's choice. If the koan is wrong, or if the subject's nature was previously established, the Master takes one token away from the Student if they have any.
- A Student may give a token to the Master and declare what they believe the rule to be. Write this declaration in all bold. ("Master, I believe that a thing has the Buddha nature if it has fur.") If a Student is the first to correctly identify the rule, the Master praises them for their enlightened answer and awards them a point. Otherwise, the Master reminds the Student of a previously-mentioned koan which contradicts the proposed rule, or gives a new contradicting koan if no previous one will serve. ("But fish have the Buddha nature, yet have no fur.") A Student may not attempt to guess the rule if they have none of the Master's tokens.
- Once a rule has been discovered, the Master may come up with a new rule and give two new koans for it (one positive and one negative, as before). All previous koans given by the Master are now void, and the Students return the Master's tokens. (When playing in real life, the Student who correctly guesses the rule becomes the new Master.)
- Whoever has the most points when we reach page 10 wins.
- Rules which seem easy to the Master may not seem so easy to the Students. It is best to start simple and increase difficulty only if the last rule was guessed quickly.
- To keep things simple on our first outing, do not make rules that refer to the words themselves as opposed to their meanings. (No rules such as "A thing has the Buddha nature if it is spelled with five letters.")
A serpent has the Buddha nature. A tree does not.
