KOAN OR NO KOAN

For many serious Zen students, there comes a time when they must decide whether to go more deeply into their training through tackling koans. There is no specific or particular schedule of when this might happen. Some students start their koan journey almost immediately after they begin to sit meditation; others may sit for years before taking this step. And for a few, koan training is imposed on them. (This last situation happens often at sesshin, which are intensive meditation sessions: even if a student does not want to meet the teacher one-on-one, the jiki, the person running the session, forces that student to stand up and go.)

Koans were originally a public record that set a standard of judgment. In Zen, often through a short story, dialogue or question, they function as a way to assess the depth of students’ Zen experience, challenging them to transcend logic and reach into something – someplace – where ordinary rules do not apply, even to the form of a koan and the setting of koan training. Zen masters of old – and even now – use everyday life, encounters and implements to teach and challenge students.

Koans point to a world where a cart crosses a bridge and a bridge crosses a cart, where a lofty mountain and the tiny poppy seed are the same while simultaneously remaining different, and where you can describe what your face looks like before your parents were born. Koans are not bothered by contradictions, because contradictions are outcomes of differentiation. Instead, they challenge us to let go of differentiation and see from a samadhi point of view, that is, from the perspective of Emptiness.

Many people, even those who are not students of Zen, are familiar with the following koan, which comes from 18th-century Japanese Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

An old friend, who was a long-time international social justice activist and entrepreneur, proudly exclaimed to me: “I know the sound of one hand clapping!” As she said this, she held up one of her hands and came up to me, signaling that I should hold up my hand and join in a clap with her. This, she insisted, was the best answer. From her intellectual, logical viewpoint, she was correct: her world was all about building international cooperation.

From a Zen perspective, however, the worst enemy is the intellect. In his Selected Writings, Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki says the intellect “consists [of] and insists in discriminating subject from object. . . .The discriminating intellect, therefore, must be cut short if Zen consciousness is to unfold itself.” This is the function of koan training, which focuses on the “reason of unreason.” “The idea is to unfold the Zen psychology of the mind of the uninitiated, and to reproduce the state of consciousness, of which these statements are the expression.”

The koan is presented from Emptiness. The answer, too, must come from Emptiness. Emptiness comes from inside, not outside.

Sometimes struggling with a koan is enough to awaken students to realization (often referred to as enlightenment). More often than not, though, koans, serving merely as pointers, create more puzzlement and perplexity. Students must undergo a deep searching that creates an internal, all-consuming tension so strong that it must somehow be resolved.

There is a saying that “silence is more suitable to Zen than eloquence.” The realization of one’s True Nature cannot be reduced to words, even as we use words to describe it. Words – no matter how beautiful, eloquent and poetic – can never capture the actual experience. Attempting to describe Emptiness is akin to describing the taste of strawberries to someone who has never tasted strawberries. It is impossible to describe what Suzuki calls the “entirely new vista” that opens up.

Intellectual, logical resolutions – whether expressed through words or actions -- take you in the wrong direction. Any “answer” you think of is not going to take you far.

For Zen teachers, koans are one of their strongest tools; for students, koans are one of the toughest challenges. Zen teachers are not looking for any particular answer. Instead, teachers are interested in who is the person asking the question in search of an answer.