![]() This surprising answer has catalyzed practitioners’ meditation, self-questioning, and development of insight for all these centuries, and the koan is still given to students today. You may have heard some of the more celebrated koans, such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “Show me your face before your parents were born.” One famous example of a single-word koan derives from a 10th-century Chinese story in which a student asks the renowned master Chao-chou (Japanese, Joshu) whether a dog has buddhanature (the potential for awakening) and the master replies, “Wu!”-in Japanese “Mu!” ( emptiness). For further reading, check out 101 Zen Stories, which includes 101 Zen Stories and The Gateless Gate, The Blue Cliffs Records (PDF), and this collection of Zen Buddhism resources at Sacred Texts. It was hard to stop at seven for this (but seven and zen rhyme). These are short irrational anecdotes which are meant to challenge a student and help progress their understanding of Zen. Zen’s not about logic or words, but your state of mind. In some schools, a student may work on a koan for years, or may need to work through a traditional list of koans. Suzuki also explains the function of Zen koans in practice. When habitual thinking or reasoning leads nowhere, students will begin to “sit with” the koan and ultimately bring the teacher a direct or spontaneous “answer” that reflects their Zen training. The tradition of koan study may vary in some ways in different schools of Zen, but in the form most familiar to us in the West, students are given a koan (which may be more or less well known) and are asked to demonstrate to the teacher their comprehension of its meaning. In these anthologies, each story-usually an exchange between two Buddhist masters or between master and student-is paired with elucidating commentary, a brief encapsulation of the point, lines of verse, and sometimes commentary on the verse. ![]() The word koan is a spelling of Chinese gong’an, meaning “public record” or “legal precedent,” and also means “story.” Most of the koans used today come from several collections of gong’an dating back to 12th- and 13th-century China the best-known collections have been translated many times and are found in English under titles like The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Record. Or, as I suggested in my study of koans, the grammar, or language of dragons. ![]() Contemplating these words is part of the training given by a teacher to help a Buddhist student to awaken. They’re usually short and give us the sense of how to engage koans, the language of koans if you will. A koan is a surprising or paradoxical word or phrase, taken from an anecdote, that is used as an object of meditation in traditions descended from Chinese Chan Buddhism, like Japanese Zen.
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