Sitting with koans

A koan is a “case record” or “public notice”.

• The aim of a koan is to precipitate a genuine religious crisis.
• It works by inducing extreme tension-in-doubt. Great faith and great doubt kept in dynamic equilibrium balanced by great determination.
• Koans can appear paradoxical. But paradox exists only in language, in the words and ideas that describe reality, not in reality itself.
  • Once we abandon the hope that there’s a rational answer it takes us toward (perfect and all-encompassing) reality.
  • “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” What is involved is not a matter of “has” or “has not.” Either answer would be absurd.
• We are not separate from the world, just like bubbles on a the surface of the ocean are not separate from the ocean.
• Zen frees us to make free and lively use of ethics and common sense rather than be constrained and limited by them. We can push past the habits and patterns of what we think works for our lives.
• The leap from the hundred-foot-pole (from the conditioned to the unconditioned) is immediate, sudden. But it takes time to build up the courage to jump.

Gathered notes

Koans

• The word koan is a combination of graphs that signifies “public notice” or “public announcement.”
• The koan is an artificial problem given by a teacher to a student with the aim of precipitating a genuine religious crisis.
• Ruth Fuller Sasaki: “When the koan is resolved it is realised to be a simple and clear statement made from the state of consciousness which it has helped to awaken.”
• Koans help us directly and intimately experience (perfect and all-encompassing) reality itself. Beyond objective reasoning and toward ultimate unity.
• The koan’s significance becomes clear once we finally abandon the hope that something can be achieved.
• The first koan can take years. Progress is often irregular. Alternating between smooth sailing and self-doubt / confusion.
• Extreme tension-in-doubt. Great faith and great doubt kept in dynamic equilibrium balanced by great determination.
• “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” What is involved is not a matter of “has” or “has not.” Either answer would be absurd.

Zen

• Just as millions of bubbles can form on the surface of the ocean, millions of individual selves with unique identities are born in the cosmos. The illusion is that these bubbles are separate from the ocean, these individual selves are separate from the cosmos.
• Zen frees us from the suffering and constraints caused by ethics and common sense. Not to ignore or defy them, but to make free and lively use of them.
• Push past our habitual ways of regarding what we think works for our lives.
• The leap from the hundred-foot-pole (from the conditioned to the unconditioned). It’s immediate, but it might take time to build up the courage to jump.
• Emptiness as is living, dynamic, devoid of mass, unfixed, beyond individuality or personality-the matrix of all phenomenon.
• Paradox exists only in language, in the words and ideas that describe reality, not in reality itself.

Raw notes

Introduction: the anatomy of the Zen koan

• Paradox exists only in language, in the words and ideas that describe reality.
• In order to see into a koan we must go beyond the words and ideas that describe reality and directly and intimately experience reality itself. The answer to a koan is not a fixed piece of information. It is one’s own intimate experience of the universe and its infinite facets. It is a state of consciousness.
• Sometimes it takes years to see the first koan.
• Great faith and great doubt are in dynamic equilibrium. They create a spiritual tension that must be balanced with a third quality: great determination.
• Progression through the koan system varies from person to person, but most often it is irregular, with periods of smooth sailing interrupted by moments of self-doubt and confusion.

Historical Perspective

The definition of a koan

• The koans may be compared to the case records of the public law court. … case records to be used as precedent.
• The word “ko”, or “public”, means that the koans put a stop to private understanding; the word “an”, or “case records”, means that they are guaranteed to accord with the buddhas and the ancestors.

The Song period: a time of maturation

• The word koan is a combination of graphs that signifies “public notice” or “public announcement.”
• The koan urges us to abandon our rational thought structures and step beyond our usual state of consciousness in order to press into new and unknown dimensions.
• Like shooting an arrow from a tightly drawn bow.
• Ruth Fuller Sasaki: “When the koan is resolved it is realised to be a simple and clear statement made from the state of consciousness which it has helped to awaken.”
• “Mu”: a word that was meant to lead the student beyond objective reasoning and toward ultimate unity.
• The quickest and surest way to this kind of experience is through the extreme tension-in-doubt produced by the koan exercise.

Five houses of Zen

• On the highest level of consciousness one sees reality as perfect and all-encompassing.
• The fundamental identity of the Absolute and the Relative.
• What is absolute, one, identical, universal, and noumenal set up in tension with what is relative, manifold, different, particular, and phenomenal.

The “Short-cut” approach of k’an-hua meditation

• … rather than reflect over the entire kung-an exchange, which could lead the mind to distraction, one should instead zero in on the principal topic, or most essential element, of that exchange, the “critical phrase”.
• “mu” creates an introspective focus that eventually leads the meditator back to the minds’ enlightened source - “tracing back the radiance emanating from the mind.” Once the student has recovered their mind’s source by this counter-illumination, they will know the intent with which the “mu” response was made-and, by extension, the enlightened mind that framed that intent-and will consumate in themself the very same state of enlightenment.
• … much of traditional Chinese apprenticeship took place in the same way, learning to do the whole job properly over a long period of time rather than mastering a series of smaller steps.
• The clever are obstructed by their cleverness.
• Give up the conceit that you have the intellectual tools to understand it.
• It’s only when you finally abandon all attempts to understand the koan that its real significance becomes clear.
• There’s nothing that needs to be developed; all the student must do is simply renounce both the hope that there is something that can be achieved through the practice as well as the conceit that they will achieve that result.
• The leap from the hundred-foot-pole (from the conditioned to the unconditioned) … Ch-an does not deny that it might take time for one to build up the courage necessary to take the ultimate plunge. But its lack of sequence at least freed it from charges of being gradualistic.
• When the sense of frustration over one’s inability to resolve the koan through ordinary logic has brought an end to random thought, intense one-pointedness of mind is engendered, which eventually produces the experience of no-thought.

The nature of Rinzai (Linji) koan practice

• The koan is an artificial problem given by a teacher to a student with the aim of precipitating a genuine religious crisis that involves all the human faculties-intellect., emotion, and will.
• Kensho is not the self’s withdrawal from the conventional world, but rather the selfless self breaking back into the conventional world. It is only when this samadhi has been shattered that a new self arises. This self returns and again sees the things of the world as objects, now as empty objects; it again thinks in differentiated categories and feels attachment, but now with insight into their emptiness.
• Zen awakening does not cause perception to lose it crisp, clear form.

Japanese koan study

Dogen and koans

• We need to challenge and encourage one another to realise our clarity and compassion.

Keizan, koans, and succession in the Soto school

• Prajan is not a special, privileged, “correct” way of knowing events but rather is the knowing events in the total absence of all viewpoints and perspectives.
• Western philosophers in modern times have concluded that such a perspectiveless perspective is impossible … all knowledge is conditioned by culture, physiology, and personality.
• “No mind” is not confusion, uncertainty, or blankness, but, rather, an extremely clear knowing freed of all conceptualisation and symbolisation.

Modern koan commentaries

Nansen (Nanquan) kills a cat

• The story denies all rational or intellectual approaches.
• Koans are fundamentally different from instructions in ethics and common sense.
• Zen frees us from the suffering and constraints caused by ethics and common sense. This does not mean to ignore or defy them, but to be the master of them and make free and lively use of them.

Commentary on the koan “mu”

• Not mere emptiness. That which is living, dynamic, devoid of mass, unfixed, beyond individuality or personality-the matrix of all phenomenon.
• Bhudda-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability.
• “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” What is involved is not a matter of “has” or “has not.” Either answer would be absurd.

A buffalo passes through a window

• Just as millions of bubbles can form on the surface of the ocean, millions of individual selves with unique identities are born in this world. The illusion is that these bubbles, these individual selves, are separate from the ocean.
• Psychologist know that although it occurs at a very young age, the concept of self is developed.

Everybody’s light

• Push past all delusory thoughts-not only thoughts, but all of our habitual ways of regarding what we think works for our lives.
• Our lack of self-esteem is ego-based.

From Sitting with koans by John Daido Loori.

Added 2025-01-07, last updated 2025-01-11.