The Zen Koan is a written or verbal puzzle used in the teaching of Buddhism tobring the student to the level of satori or enlightenment. According to D TSuzuki in An Introduction To Zen Buddhism, the word Koan “. . .
now denotes someanecdote of an ancient master, or a dialogue between master and monks, or astatement or question put forward by a teacher, all of which are used as themeans for opening ones mind to the truth of Zen. “(Suzuki 102). Koans areoften in the form of statements that seem, at first, to make little or no sense. This aspect of a Koan is intended to help the student concentrate on the wordsand pull meaning from them in the same way that they must pull meaning fromthemselves in order to achieve “satori”.
Koans sometimes seem to beconstructed of two contradicting concepts, which may be true from the standpointof the dynamics of language. This joining of two opposing concepts is meant toshow the student that all concepts are actually a part of one another since theyexist in the same world. Koans are intended to join the opposing concepts withinthe student, which is the “oneness” of Zen Buddhism. “Zen masters, by thismeans, would force the evolution of the Zen consciousness into the minds oftheir less endowed disciples.
“(Suzuki 102). The real “self” of Zen lies inthe harmony of opposites. To those who pay more attention to the actual writtenwords of the Koan, Koans will never make sense. Koans are deliberately meant todefy the logic that exists in the world outside the self, the world ofgovernment and social constructs. They are meant to help the student see theworld undistorted by these learned concepts.
The language of a Koan also usessimple concepts and objects that are universal. Keeping the subject simple, thestudent does not have to worry themselves over the symbolism of the subject, butrather, what the entire composition of the Koan represents. The composition as awhole, once it is thought of in this way, should reveal something about thewholeness of the individual who has figured it out. An example of this dualityand simplicity is found in the following Koan: “When your mind is not dwellingon the duality of good and evil, what is your original face before you wereborn?”(Suzuki 104). The subjects of koans tend to be simple objects such astrees, animals or aspects of nature. Or simple words for concepts or emotions,such as love, hate, good and evil .
This attention to simplicity helps thestudent to view the entire Koan, instead of being anchored to a complex,abstract concept. The reasoning behind every Koan is the same, that the world isone interdependent whole and that each separate one of us is that Whole. In theabove Koan, there is simplicity in the choice of the words “good and evil”over any words that may represent these symbolically. In fact, the first part ofthe Koan may not even be the most important part, but only stated to make thestudent realize that they are concerned with the duality of the outside world. The conflicts of the outside world have been distracting the student fromrealizing the purity of their own face “before you were born.
” The famousKoan that goes: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is interesting inthe sense that if one thinks of it in terms of the logic that they were taughtby the outside world, there is no such sound. “Ordinarily, a sound is heardonly when two hands are clapping, and in that sense no sound can come from onehand alone. . . .
” This Koan, however, is meant to “. . . strike at the root ofour everyday experience, which is constructed on so-called scientific or logicalbasis”(Suzuki 105). The duality here lies in what we have been taught to belogical. The Koan threatens our knowledge of the way our world is supposed towork.
” The Koans, therefore, as we have seen, are generally such as to shutup all possible avenues to rationalization”(Suzuki 108). The Zen Buddhist Koanis naturally irrational, and is meant to oppose the knowledge the studentpossesses on the surface, to be exchanged for inner knowledge. This impliesthat, according to Zen, all humans have a natural core that “knows” allthings are one whole. The Koan helps the student to pull this information to thesurface, to live inside out.
It tells the student to learn how to beundistracted by the events of the world outside the self. To live as if allevents are happening outside as well as inside and are all interrelated.
