A koan is a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan ( Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to intuition. One famous koan is, "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (oral tradition, attributed to Hakuin Ekaku ( 1686- 1769), considered a reviver of the koan tradition in Japan.)
Koans are said to reflect the enlightened or awakened state of historical sages and legendary figures who uttered them, and sometimes said to confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness. Koans typically include the words of, or dialog with, an awakened or enlightened person, generally one authorized to teach in a lineage that regards Bodhidharma (c. 5th- 6th century) as its ancestor. Informally, the term koan sometimes refers to any experience that accompanies awakening, spiritual insight, or kensho.
As used by teachers, monks, and students in training, koan can refer to a story selected from traditional sayings and doings of such sages, a perplexing element of the story, a concise but critical word or phrase (話頭 hua-tou) extracted from the story, or to the story appended by poetry and commentary authored by later Zen teachers, sometimes layering commentary upon commentary.
English-speaking non-Zen practitioners sometimes use koan to refer to an unanswerable question or a meaningless statement. However, in Zen practice, a koan is not meaningless, and teachers often do expect students to present an appropriate and timely response when asked about a koan. Even so, a koan is not a riddle or a puzzle 1 . Appropriate responses to a koan vary according to circumstances; there is no fixed answer that is correct in every circumstance.
The word koan corresponds to the Chinese characters 公案 which can be rendered in various ways: gongan ( Chinese pinyinPinyin (, pinyin) literally means "join together sounds" (a less literal translation being "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription") in Chinese and usually refers to Hany pinyin (, literal meaning: " Han language pinyin"), which is a system of romanizati); kung-an (Chinese Wade-GilesWade-Giles sometimes abbreviated Wade is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade in the mid- 19th century, and reached settled form with H); gong'an ( KoreanThe Korean language is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both South and North Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including); cong-an ( VietnameseVietnamese (ting Vit, ting Vit-nam, or Vit-ngữ), a tonal language, is the national and official language of Vietnam (Vit-nam). It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Vit or người kinh), who constitute ab); koan ( JapaneseThe Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. The Japanese name for the language is Nihongo . History and classification Historical linguists do not all agree about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several comp HepburnFor other meanings, see Hepburn (disambiguation). The Hepburn romanization system ( Japanese: Hebon-shiki was devised by Reverend James Curtis Hepburn to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet for his Japanese English dicti; often transliterated koan). Of these, "koan" is the most common in English. Just as Japanese Zen, Chinese Ch'an, Korean Son, and Vietnamese Thien, and Western Zen all share many features in common, likewise koans play similar roles in each, although significant cultural differences exist.
1 Examples
- A monk asked ZhaozhouZhaozhou Congshen ( 778 897?), known as Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen in Wade-Giles and Joshu Jushin in Japanese, was one of the great Chan (Zen) masters of ancient China. Zhaozhou took his monastic name from the name of the small town near Beijing where he lived, "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?". Zhaozhou said " Wú".
- ("Zhaozhou" is rendered as "Chao-chou" in Wade-Giles, and pronounced "Joshu" in Japanese. "Wu" appears as "mu" in archaic Japanese, meaning "no", "not", or "nonbeing" in English. This is a fragment of Case #1 of the Wu-Men Kuan. However, note that, a similar koan records that on another occasion, Zhaozhou said "yes" in response [Case #18 of the Book of Serenity].)
- Hui Neng asked Hui Ming "Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born".
- (This is a fragment of case #23 of the Wu-Men Kuan.)
- A monk asked Tung Shan "What is Buddha?". Tung Shan said "Three pounds of flax".
- (This is a fragment of case #18 of the Wu-Men Kuan as well as case #12 of the Blue Cliff Record.)
- A monk asked Zhaozhou, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west?". Zhaozhou said "The cypress tree in the courtyard".
- (This is a fragment of case #37 of the Wu-Men Kuan as well as case #47 of the Book of Serenity.)
