Koans

September 12, 2005 5:54 AM

A collection of Zen koans to help ease you into the week. There's another collection here, and some more here. There may be overlaps between the three collections, but I have no doubt people will simply ask themselves what it means to encounter the same koan over and over again. The answer lies in the contemplation. This has always been my favorite.
posted by OmieWise (43 comments total)

I have no doubt people will simply ask themselves what it means to encounter the same koan over and over again

It's like I always say: "How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?"
posted by alumshubby at 6:03 AM on September 12, 2005

Thanks OmieWise.

Doug Hofstadter's book, the Eternal Golden Braid, had many great koans that he twisted just a little and made me laugh. And such is the nature of Buddha.
posted by nofundy at 6:08 AM on September 12, 2005

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: `The flag is moving.'
The other said: `The wind is moving.'

The sixth patriach happened to be passing by. He told them: `Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.'

(not exactly Koan, but I love this- everything is perception.)
posted by exlotuseater at 6:12 AM on September 12, 2005

Thanks.
posted by gai at 7:21 AM on September 12, 2005

Ganto's Axe
One day Tokusan told his student Ganto, 'I have two monks who have been here for many years. Go and examine them.' Ganto picked up an ax and went to the hut where the two monks were meditating. He raised the ax, saying, 'If you say a word I will cut off your heads; and if you do not say a word, I will also cut off your heads.' Both monks continued their meditation as if he had not spoken. Ganto dropped the ax and said, 'You are true Zen students.' He returned to Tokusan and related the incident. 'I see your side well,' Tokusan agreed, 'but tell me, how is their side?' 'Tozan may admit them,' replied Ganto, 'but they should not be admitted under Tokusan.'
posted by leapfrog at 7:31 AM on September 12, 2005

Great collection of koans. Thanks for the post. Also, since no one said it yet, ZenFilter
posted by Outlawyr at 7:31 AM on September 12, 2005

Strange, my favorite is only present in the third collection, and even then with an ending I've never seen before. Here is the one I read originally:

Gutei's Finger

Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger.

Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

When Gutei was about to pass from this world he gathered his monks around him. `I attained my finger-Zen,' he said, `from my teacher Tenryu, and in my whole life I could not exhaust it.' Then he passed away.

posted by splice at 7:41 AM on September 12, 2005

Somewhere in downtown Duluth, a plumber is over-cooking a pork chop.
posted by dinsdale at 8:00 AM on September 12, 2005

Domo.
posted by shoepal at 8:32 AM on September 12, 2005

I recall one, can't seem to find it on this site...

The master tells the student to go sit under a tree all day and meditate until he achieves enlightenment. At the end of the day, the master goes to the student and asks whether he's been successful. The students says he believes he has. The master says, "Well, then, explain it to me." So the student explains the truth that has been revealed to him. The master listens and then shouts at the student, "Wrong!" and beats him mercilessly with a stick.

The next day, the master again tells the student to sit under the tree and meditate. Again, at the end of the day, the teacher comes to him and asks if he's achieved enlightenment. Again, the student thinks he has and explains his revelation, though it's different than it was the first day. But the master's response is the same. He shouts "Wrong!" and beats the student.

This goes on for a few weeks. Each day the student meditates and each day he describes a different truth. Each time he is beaten.

Then, finally, one day, when asked to explain the truth that's been revealed to him, the student doesn't speak. He stands up, takes the stick from the master and beats him with it. Then, looking up at his student from the ground, the master says "Congratulations. You have achieved enlightenment."
posted by Clay201 at 8:34 AM on September 12, 2005

I've been looking for a certain koan for a long time. I can't remember it exactly, but it went something like this.

An acolyte and his master were walking down the street in a city discussing the Tao when a drunken man ran smack into the master, knocking him into the mud. The master quickly rose and began teaching the acolyte and walking down the street. The acolyte pointed to the drunk and asked his master, "Master! Aren't you going to do something?" "About what?" "That man who knocked you over!" "Oh. That's his problem."

something like that. Or not. Actually I really butchered it. I would just really really like to find it. Any help?
posted by n9 at 8:36 AM on September 12, 2005

That's a favorite, OmieWise. Another of my favorites, though this isn't my favorite translation, is:

Unmon's Dry Shit-Stick
A monk asked Unmon, "What is Buddha?"
Unmon replied, "A dry shit-stick!"

http://oaks.nvg.org/wm2ra6.html#21
More Gateless Gate at that site.
posted by freebird at 8:59 AM on September 12, 2005

I've heard this as "What is Buddha nature?" "Dry shit on a stick!"
posted by youarejustalittleant at 9:03 AM on September 12, 2005

What did your face look like before your parents were born?
posted by bashos_frog at 9:49 AM on September 12, 2005

Here's my favorite:

Whitey McCrunchy and Gautama were walking down the road. Whitey turned to Guatama and said "I would like to appear worldly by name-dropping your religion and while remaining a typical Western materialist. It will make me appear less shallow and it may enable me to score with girls who, though smelliing a little off, are generally quite hot."

"Attaining the way of higher truths takes much devotion and time. Perhaps you would be better off as a Unitarian if you want to recite t-shirt style Love And Peace aphorisms in order to appear sensitive," replied Gautama.

"No, I need something more exotic than that. You don't chat up girls at Peet's when you're reading Emerson anymore. I'll just read about your school in my spare time."
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:28 AM on September 12, 2005

I like this one:
I don't know if this qualifies as Zen or not, but I've aloways liked this story:

One day, a farmer's horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and said 'that's too bad.' He said 'maybe.' Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses. 'Wow!' they said, 'Aren't you lucky!' He said 'maybe.' He next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said 'oh, that's too bad that your son broke his leg.' He said, 'maybe.' The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said 'Isn't that great! Your son got out.' He said, 'maybe.'
posted by Scoo at 10:40 AM on September 12, 2005

Not a koan but I always liked this. From a sign on the sewing cabin wall on Mt. Baldy:
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like bananas.
posted by pointilist at 11:10 AM on September 12, 2005

In a similar vein: I'm separated from my wife but not yet divorced, so I'm not married to her any more...but not any less, either.
posted by alumshubby at 12:08 PM on September 12, 2005

Scoo;

I heard that story in an Asian Relgions class, but it was used to illustrate a taoist principle and instead of "maybe," the farmer says "Who knows what is bad or good?".
posted by Clay201 at 12:10 PM on September 12, 2005

A favorite of mine: One day Mayokuri went to the master and said, "master, the others are discussing something of interest among themselves, and do not know that I find them puerile and inferior. How can I make them aware of my stature relative to them?" Whereupon the master, without turning, raised the back of his robe and said "kiss my ass."
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:49 PM on September 12, 2005

What did the buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?

Make me one with everything.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:43 PM on September 12, 2005

Meatbomb: the monk asked for his change and the vendor said "Change comes from within"
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:03 PM on September 12, 2005

A serious young man found the conflicts of mid 20th Century America confusing. He went to many people seeking a way of resolving within himself the discords that troubled him, but he remained troubled.

One night in a coffee house, a self-ordained Zen Master said to him, "go to the dilapidated mansion you will find at this address which I have written down for you. Do not speak to those who live there; you must remain silent until the moon rises tomorrow night. Go to the large room on the right of the main hallway, sit in the lotus position on top of the rubble in the northeast corner, face the corner, and meditate."

He did just as the Zen Master instructed. His meditation was frequently interrupted by worries. He worried whether or not the rest of the plumbing fixtures would fall from the second floor bathroom to join the pipes and other rash he was sitting on.

He worried how would he know when the moon rose on the next night. He worried about what the people who walked through the room said about him.

His worrying and meditation were disturbed when, as if in a test of his faith, ordure fell from the second floor onto him. At that time two people walked into the room. The first asked the second who the man was sitting there was. The second replied "Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead."

Hearing this, the man was enlightened.
posted by sfenders at 3:55 PM on September 12, 2005

Site seems to be down, is there a mirror?
posted by cell divide at 4:14 PM on September 12, 2005

Is a link a link if it doesn't link?
posted by tula at 7:02 PM on September 12, 2005

Whitey McCrunchy and Gautama were walking down the road. Whitey turned to Guatama and said "I would like to appear worldly by name-dropping your religion and while remaining a typical Western materialist. It will make me appear less shallow and it may enable me to score with girls who, though smelliing a little off, are generally quite hot."

"Attaining the way of higher truths takes much devotion and time. Perhaps you would be better off as a Unitarian if you want to recite t-shirt style Love And Peace aphorisms in order to appear sensitive," replied Gautama.

"No, I need something more exotic than that. You don't chat up girls at Peet's when you're reading Emerson anymore. I'll just read about your school in my spare time."
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:28 AM PST on September 12 [!]

Mayor Curley nails it. Zen is nothing. Always has been. Koans don't mean anything. The whole thing is deliberately as abstractive and meaningless as possible. It's a trap.

Get over it, maybe find a new standard to raise up to make yourself feel cool and intelectual that isn't so obvious. Don't fret over your western materialism, it's likely that the whole 'Zen' thing was created as a trap for ancient eastern materialists trying to feel all cool and intellectual.

It's always been a trap. People wanting to retain the 'Zen' self-image while hopping on the cluetrain can simple think of their realizing that it's a trap as some kind of satori ("Moment of Zen" in Xeni-speak) or something.
posted by blasdelf at 8:26 PM on September 12, 2005

Wow! Glad you cleared that up.
posted by pointilist at 9:27 PM on September 12, 2005

All the koans that don't end with someone getting beaten with a stick, should. It would vastly improve most of them.

Especially that one about the guy who keeps saying "maybe." Man, that guy burns me up.
posted by FeetOfClay at 10:23 PM on September 12, 2005

Zen is nothing. Always has been. Koans don't mean anything. The whole thing is deliberately as abstractive and meaningless as possible. It's a trap.

It is true that one benefit of studying koans is that you will face a lot of frustration in your meditation, and this can be a useful basis for practice. However, such frustration is not the ultimate goal of koan study, and you are mistaken if you think they are completely meaningless.

You can only gain benefit from Buddhist principles by directly experiencing their operation in your own mental life, and because of this, there is a tendency in Zen Buddhism to mistrust purely intellectual understandings. The passage beginning with "THE STUDENT Doken" on the Koan Riddles page is an example of this mistrust.

Koans are intended as a way to encode the principles in allegories which are difficult to see until you experience them directly in your own life. This makes them a good way for a teacher to ensure that his students aren't simply intellectualizing, but it makes individual study of them a particularly bad way to first learn about Buddhism, because their true meanings are so obscurely encoded that unless you have a teacher you trust to tell you whether you've understood one, you are bound to confuse yourself. Other schools of Buddhism are more explicit, though, and if you start with one of them and come back to koans, you can often confidently see where they're coming from.

This essay shows the kind of allegory I'm talking about. There is also a brief discussion of the principle behind a koan in one of the interviews in The Seven Pillars of Zen. One of Thich Nhat Hanh's books also has a discussion of the role of koans (he calls them "kung-ans") but I forget which book at the moment. Toward the end of that discussion he says something like "a teacher can always explain your kung-an to you in terms of the sutras and psychology, but that is missing the point."

So you're right that Zen is a trap in the sense that purely intellectual consideration of koans will get you nowhere, but that is not what they are for, and they are certainly not meaningless.
posted by Coventry at 10:31 PM on September 12, 2005

blasdelf;

This may shock you and the mayor, but some people actually find these koans or the zen-related ideas they read about to be useful or interesting, quite apart from their value as tools for getting into someone's pants.
In fact... I can't imagine that spouting this sort of stuff would have gotten me anywhere with any of the women in whom I've been interested. It certainly never occurred to me to try it. Sure, you see such shtick in movies, but I always feel deeply embarrassed for the characters who engage in it.

On the other hand, I've certainly taken principles that I've learned from koans or from The Tao of Pooh or from the aforementioned Asian religions class and applied them to real life problems. At times, they've been quite useful. And sometimes, they're just interesting to think about. Yes, there are people who are pretentious, obnoxious twits about the subject, but the same can be said of almost any segment of culture, from Marilyn Manson to Shakespeare.
posted by Clay201 at 11:40 PM on September 12, 2005

Mayor Curley nails it. Zen is nothing.

I don't think Mayor Curley said quite that. What he said, in a mock koan, was that a Western materialist ("Whitey McCrunchy") might play with koans, bring the trappings of Zen up in conversation, in order to "appear worldly by name-dropping [Zen] and while remaining a typical Western materialist."

Pay attention to how people live, not what they say, if you want to know what they're like. If you see a priest arrive at church in a limo, you will know more about him than you will learn from all his sermons about the poor. Likewise, don't take people's Zen chat too seriously if they live the Whitey McCrunchy life.
posted by pracowity at 11:48 PM on September 12, 2005

On the other hand, I've certainly taken principles that I've learned from koans or from The Tao of Pooh or from the aforementioned Asian religions class and applied them to real life problems.

May I ask for an example or two? I'm curious to hear what you learned from The Tao of Pooh that was of practical use.
posted by pracowity at 12:02 AM on September 13, 2005

Zen is nothing. Always has been. Koans don't mean anything. The whole thing is deliberately as abstractive and meaningless as possible. It's a trap.

Reading this, the man was enlightened.

That website would be better if it had "Next-" and "Previous Koan" links on the koan pages themselves, instead of just an index.

Regarding Zen, I think this saying describes life best: What can you do when you can do nothing?
posted by moonbiter at 2:13 AM on September 13, 2005

pracowity;

It's been a while since I read the book, but if I recall correctly...

Hoffman relates the behavior of Pooh to the Taoist concept of Pu, or "the uncarved block." He spends some time explaining the concept; it's about being open to, and capable of learning from, experiences without pre-judgement.

How do I use this in the real world? Well, I've had fairly serious health problems for most of my life and have had many a doctor tell me that they didn't know what the problem was or, worse, diagnose and treat me incorrectly. So I've had to do a lot of investigative reading and so forth on my own and quite a bit of that has dealt with non-mainstream medical ideas and practices. Many, many times I've come across an idea or a theory and had to ask myself, "Okay, is this worth pursuing? Do I want to file this away for later, or should I begin now chasing it down." Usually, I couldn't answer this question by looking at the scientific research on the subject because it hadn't really been studied or there were other issues that complicated the question. So I'd have to ask not whether it has been proven, but, instead, "how does it strike me?" If I just sort of sit here and don't think about anything in particular and this idea wanders into the room, what's the first thing I notice? What's interesting about it? Once I've answered this question, it's often a lot easier to make my decision.

I probably could've learned the same principle in a chemistry class or from reading a web page or from an old lady in the park. It just so happened that I learned it from this book.
posted by Clay201 at 4:54 AM on September 13, 2005

Yiddish Tao

- Man travels to high mountain to encounter wise man in cave.
- Man asks, What is the meaning of life?
- Wise man responds, life is a fountain.
- Man is outraged, I traveled all this great distance and suffered hardships to find you and all you have to say is life is a fountain?
- Wise man responds, you mean it's not a fountain?
posted by a_day_late at 5:09 AM on September 13, 2005

the wise man blasdelf said: I don't understand what you are talking about, therefore, you are making no sense.
posted by a_day_late at 5:15 AM on September 13, 2005

Thanks OmieWise - figures with a name like that, you'd post something like this. The one stop shop of internet enlightenment. Thank gawd true wisdom takes no effort.
posted by peacay at 6:32 AM on September 13, 2005

"True wisdom takes no effort," said the monk, sadly. "For what effort does a stone make, or the sky, or a tree, or a true lover?"

"But how can I stop making effort?"

"How can I stop trying to be like a stone, or like the sky, or like a tree, or like a true lover?"

"That," smiled the teacher, "is the part that requires effort."
posted by cleardawn at 9:36 AM on September 13, 2005

Outlawyr, thanks for pointing out zenfilter! I hadn't seen that before.

To ground this rather abstract thread a little, here's an interesting chunk of text from Zenfilter. In case anyone didn't know, the Four Noble Truths are generally agreed to be the core teachings of Buddhism:

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (RE-ORDERED) FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Third Truth: Our natural state of being is peaceful and joyful, with a flow of compassion within ourselves and between all beings.

First Truth: Sometimes peace is interrupted. We experience pain or dissatisfaction. This happens to all beings, all the time!

Second Truth: Looking within, deeply, lovingly, and gently, we can touch our pain with compassion. We begin to see that the roots of our pain are within us, not outside us. Taking responsibility for our pain, we have the opportunity to heal it and return to peace.

Fourth Truth: The Eightfold Path of Peace and Joy is the way of the peacemaker. The three main components are: Awareness, Wholesome Behavior, and Wisdom (realizing boundless openness, our non-separate, compassionately connected reality).
posted by cleardawn at 11:54 AM on September 13, 2005

Clay201: So I'd have to ask not whether it has been proven, but, instead, "how does it strike me?" If I just sort of sit here and don't think about anything in particular and this idea wanders into the room, what's the first thing I notice?

And you're saying that's Zen? It sounds a bit like the blink stuff that was the chatterer's fad not long ago.
posted by pracowity at 2:22 PM on September 13, 2005

People wanting to retain the 'Zen' self-image while hopping on the cluetrain can simple think of their realizing that it's a trap as some kind of satori ("Moment of Zen" in Xeni-speak) or something.

Plagued by the demon of anger, a man seeking enlightenment struggles through hardships and climbs a mountain until he reaches the foot of a pedistal upon which sits a sage.

"What is the meaning of life?" asks the man.

The sage says: "Not to engage in conflict."

The man says: "That's ridiculous. Your entire ethos is based on meaningless drivel! You're supposed to be this enlightened sage and you have no answers. This is all an attempt to feel and look better than me when in fact you're mired in the same hell I am! Conflict drives nearly our entire society! That cannot possibly be the answer to life!"

The sage says: "Ok."
----------------


My favorite koan is: If a tree falls in the forest
posted by Smedleyman at 3:12 PM on September 13, 2005

pracowity;

No, not Zen; Taosim. And actually, not, technically Taoism. Rather, a concept I read about in a book that discussed some Taoist ideas and which I then interpreted subjectively.
posted by Clay201 at 11:50 PM on September 13, 2005

The Taoist ideas that can be discussed in books are not the eternal Taoist ideas.

Or at least that's what I read someplace...
posted by cleardawn at 1:34 PM on September 14, 2005