Learning Objectives:

• Define what are koans
• Explore the different ways to practice with koans
• Provide some guidance to start

Reading Material:

• How to Practice Zen Koans by John Tarrant

Motivations - This is an attempt to introduce beginners to the study of koans. I am a beginner myself (still and always). I have tried to find my way through the literature, and took recommendations from a Zen Roshi. Here are a few excerpts and notes I could find from literature, that could help you start.

Note: this is still work in progress!

How to start?

Here’s a couple of thoughts to start practicing with Koans.

1. Read the short article on How to Practice Zen Koans by John Tarrant

2. Read this page, relate the quotes and notes to one another, compare with John Tarrant’s approach, identify what’s the point of the practice for you.

3. Talk about it with a Zen teacher in your Sangha, or a fellow practitioner. Don’t overlook this step. Obtaining guidance can make the practice more relevant.

4. Pick a collection to start with (see below), like the Mumonkan which is easy to access.

5. Just do it, and see how it goes. Raise your concerns during Dokusan with a Zen teacher. Again, this is important. Doing it alone has limitations and concerns, doing it with a friend in the Dharma is easier and also funnier.

List of well-known koan collections

• Hekiganroku: the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of koans originally compiled in Song China in 1125, and then expanded into its present form by Chan master Yuanwu Keqin (1063–1135).
• Mumonkan: the Gateless Barrier (or Gateless Gate), a collection of 48 koans compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Zen master Wumen Huikai (1183–1260).
• Shōyōroku: the Book of Serenity (or Book of Equanimity), comprises a collection of 100 koans written by the Chan Buddhist master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157), together with commentaries by Wansong Xingxiu (1166–1246).
• Shinjoshobogenzo: Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 300 cases compiled by the founder of the Soto School of Zen Eihei Dogen between 1223-1227.
• Denkōroku: The record of transmitting the light includes 53 enlightenment stories based on the traditional legendary accounts of Dharma transmission in the Sōtō lineage, by Keizan Jōkin.

What are koans?

The literal meaning of the Chinese kung-an (Japanese: koan) is “public notice” or “public announcement.” Some words of a master or an episode from his life are presented to the disciple as an example for practice and attaining enlightenment. Although the core layer of the koan cases consists of brief reports from the master’s life, directives and comments are added by the meditation leader who presents the koan for practice. Short poems revealing the enlightened understanding of the Elders were especially popular. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

Each piece [of the Hekiganroku] consists of a directive, a core case, comment on the case, an explanation of the case, a song forming a second highlight, comments on the song, and an explanation of it. […] Each piece is a comprehensive and rather complex whole that can be mastered only with considerable effort. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

[The Mumonkan collection] is simple and less demanding than the Hekiganroku. Intended more for practical use, it has filled its purpose hundredfold. [Wu-men], the compiler of the forty-eight koans, […] collected cases comprising the entire Zen tradition, from its Indian antecedents to the masters of the Lin-chi [Rinzai] and Ts’ao-tung [Soto] schools, and added succinct, critical remarks well suited to prod the nagging doubts of the practitioner. […] Everything considered, the Mumonkan’s koans are an excellent aid to progress along the way to enlightenment. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

How to approach koans?

Koans are not riddles or puzzles whose trick is in their clever and obscure wording. They are the clearest possible expression of perennial facts which students grasp with focused meditation and guidance. - (Aitken, 1990)

What the koan proposes to do is to develop artificially or systematically in the consciousness of the Zen follower what the early masters produced in themselves spontaneously. - (Suzuki, 1962), ch IV.2

[Koans support] an awakening to a profound experience of being by way of an encounter with concrete reality. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

[Beyond the components of a koan, in addition to the case, commentaries, capping verses, footnotes…] finally there is kyogai, the way in which a koan affects your consciousness - in other words, the effect it has on your life. This is ultimately where it counts. Because no matter how many hundreds of koans you pass through, if they do not change the way you relate to the rest of the world, then the are nothing but intellectual exercises. […] Koan introspection is not about gaining information; it is about transforming your life. - (Loori, 1990)

Such themes are pursued with a keen, inquiring spirit, and the process of resolving them may take a long time, many years in some cases. Finally, the student gains a degree of understanding and is ready for subsequent koans to amplify, clarify and deepen the original insight. - (Aitken, 1990)

Logically, all these pointers have no sense, they are beyond rational treatment. We can say that the pointers have no earthly use as they do not give us any clue from which we can start our inference. […] A slap on the face, a shaking one by the shoulder, or an utterance will most assuredly the work of pointing when the Zen consciousness has attained a certain stage of maturity. - (Suzuki, 1962), ch IV.3

Seeing into a koan requires the embodiment of a certain state of consciousness rather than an abstraction of intellectual understanding. It is this direct “seeing into” that the teacher looks for and tests to determine the clarity of the student’s understanding. And it is this direct understanding that is at the heart of realization - not the intellectualization of an idea. - (Loori, 1990)

“In answering this, one ought not to cogitate on the meaning of the phrase, nor try to get away from it; do not reason about it, nor altogether abandon reasoning; respond just as you are asked and without deliberation, just as a bell rings when it is struck, just as a man answers when he is called by name. If there were no seeking, no pondering, no contriving as to how to get at the meaning of the phrase, whatever it may be, there would be no answering - hence no awakening.” - (Suzuki, 1962), ch III.5

On examination we at once notice that there is no room in the koan to insert an intellectual interpretation. The knife is not sharp enough to cut the koan open and see what are its contents. For a koan is not a logical proposition but the expression of a certain mental state resulting from the Zen discipline. (Suzuki, 1962), ch IV.3 The truth itself is beyond all description, as is affirmed by an ancient sage, but it is by words that the truth is manifested. - (Suzuki, 1962), ch IV.3

Practicing with koans

It is critical to differentiate between koan study and formal koan introspection in the context of a vital teacher-student relationship. Koan study tends to rely on the intellect. It aims to shed light on the basic Buddhist teachings communicated in the koan in a way similar to how a teacher will comment on a case in a teisho, or formal discourse, clarifying the koan’s key points. In koan introspection, on the other hand, a student sits with the koan in zazen, letting go of trying to solve or understand it, and works on the process of embodying it. The teacher then tests the student’s direct insight into the koan in dokusan, private face-to-face interviews. - (Loori, 1990)

The approach to the koan varies with school and master. The content of the koan might, for example, be analyzed and its parts viewed separately, or else it might be grasped as a whole and appropriated to one’s inner self. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

[One koan] was given to the disciple, who was to solve it by concentrating and devoting all [their] attention to it until - as the Zen saying goes - [their] bite gave way, meaning that [they] gave up rational thinking and made head-way into the suprarational realm of enlightenment. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

The practitioner, concentrating on the koan literally day and night, enters a hyperalert state in which he is aware of one thing only: the koan. This concentration gives rise to a search - at first for the solution of the koan. Utilizing all his intellectual powers, as he naturally would, the practitioner exerts himself with all his might, but to no avail. The illogical nature of the koan resists logical solution. He then enters into a state of helplessness and runs up against the same wall again and again, like someone locked in a small room. He searches for a way out, and yet the door is open - not where is intellect is aimed, however, for the wall does not give in. To see the opening, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turnabout is necessary, in the direction of another, novel dimension. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

The koans themselves contain suggestions for summarizing their content in one clue word (Japanese: jakugo). This treatment is also popular among Zen masters. One condenses the entire koan into a word and then concentrates on it. He carries this word around with him and constantly turns it over in his mind. Zen literature compares this process to a ball of fire that one tosses about in his mouth, wanting to spit it out but unable to do so. The word might be continually repeated, murmured, or exclaimed vigorously. - (Dumoulin, 1979)

Dos and Donts

Don’t: Tai-in list of 10 “do not”

Tai-in cautions his koan students on the following ten points:

1. Do not calculate according to your imagination;
2. Let not your attention be drawn where the master raises his eyebrows or twinkles his eyes;
3. Do not try to extract meaning from the way the koan is worded;
4. Do not try to demonstrate on the words;
5. Do not think that the sense of the koan is to be grasped where it is held out as an object of thought;
6. Do not take Zen for a state of mere passivity;
7. Do not judge the koan with the dualistic standard of yu (asti) and wu (nasti);
8. Do not take the koan as pointing to absolute emptiness;
9. Do not ratiocinate on the koan;
10. Do not keep your mind in the attitude of waiting for satori to turn up.

(Suzuki, 1962), ch IV.3

Don’t: conclude who’s right or wrong

[Commenting on a specific koan] Yuanwu continues by deriding practitioners who conclude that Yunyan’s response must have been wrong, while Daowu’s was right, explaining that these kinds of practitioners are people who get caught up in words and phrases and have not yet realized the truth. He then advises his students to cut off emotional defilements and conceptual thinking and to become naked, free, and unbounded, since this is the only way to understand the truth about Great Compassion. - (Loori, 1990)

Do: use multiple perspectives

(Something I was advised to do, and I personally use frequently, to much benefit. I stimulate my reading of the koan by prompting a change in the perspective of the narrative. I use the list of questions below to interrogate the koan and dive into its multiple meanings sources of insight.)

Change of perspective

• What if you were each participant?
• What if each participant was you? (a part of you)
• What if you were all of them?

Change of time/sequence

• What if the story happened with long intervals in between? (ex: add a kalpa between a question and an answer)
• What if everything happened at once, in the same time? (ex: reducing all events to one instant)

Change of logic/view

• What if you hold all point of views in the same time?
• What if you took the opposite conclusion?
• What if you hold all views, opposite views, together?
• What if you denied all the views, hold no view at all?

Finally, reading the koan might suggest one of the participant is right, and the other(s) is wrong. But you can try the following prompts:

• What if they were both wrong?
• What if they were both right?
• What if you considered them both perfectly Enlightened, and their expression a manifestation of their Enlightenment?

Bibliography

• (Dumoulin, 1979) - Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment - Origins and Meaning, 1979, ch 7.
• (Aitken, 1990) - Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier, 1990.
• (Loori, 2005) - John Daido Loori, The True Dharma Eye - Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans, 2005.
• (Nishijima, 2003) - Gudo Nishijima, Master Dogen’s Shinji Shobogenzo, in particular Introduction (pp. iv-v)
• (Suzuki, 1962) - Daisetz T. Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, in particular chapters:
  • ch III.4 - Factors determining the Zen experience
  • ch III.5 - The psychological antecedent and the content of the Zen experience
  • ch IV.2 - The growth of the koan system and its signification
  • ch IV.3 - Practical instructions regarding the koan exercise