Zendancer, but how exactly can you know if your answer to a koan (any) is right or wrong?
P.S. Thanks for your replies. It is a very enjoyable conversation to me. I'm not interested in enlightenment any more but koans are very cool stuff to say the least. I had a book "101 Zen stories and the Iron Flute". I read it for the first time and did not get anything. Then I re-read it. And again and again. Still don't get a thing but it clicks sometimes somewhere... It's like ah! Truth is!. Yet those koans from the Iron Flute are pure hardcore. I never had ANY idea about a solution when I read them.
Eldude: I must be losing my memory! While driving to a construction project, the Joshu story suddenly came back to me. It is similar to the story about how King Soloman dealt with the two women who were fighting over a child--each claiming that it was their own. Soloman decided to chop the child in half and give each woman one half. One of the women instantly told Soloman that the other woman could have the child, thus revealing that she was the real mother.
Joshu was Zen Master Nansen's best student. They lived about a thousand years ago. One day while Joshu was gone, two monks in Nansen's monastery began fighting over the ownership of a cat. Nansen heard the argument, grabbed the cat by the neck, held it up in the air, pulled out a small sword, and said to the two men, "If you can say a turning word (a Zen phrase which means "explicate the situation correctly"), I'll spare the cat. Neither monk could respond, so Nansen supposedly chopped the cat in half. Zen students often argue about whether Nansen actually killed the cat or pantomined killing the cat. AAR, Joshu later returned to the monastery, and Nansen told him what had happened. After Joshu heard the story, he silently removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked off. Nansen said, "If you had been there, you would have saved the cat."
Yes, koans are fun, but they can't be solved by thinking. You have to see through the words to grasp the underlying issue. Koan study is usually done with a teacher in face to face interviews. The teacher tells the student to leave his/her mind behind and bring the "before-thinking mind" to the interview. The old oriental teachers were tough old birds, and rarely cut their students any slack. Zen retreats were rigorous affairs and absolute silence and stillness were the rule. American teachers, however, began taking a somewhat more relaxed attitude. They usually begin by giving the student some examples of informal koans, and then show them that they all have simple answers beyond thought. They then present somewhat harder koans and ask them to contemplate the issues during the meditation sessions. During following interactions, the student begins to see that any koan can be resolved through silent contemplation, although some koans may require months of contemplation, and a few rare ones may require years.
As the student gains confidence and finds acceptable answers, he/she may begin to challenge the teacher and dharma combat ensues. This can be a lot of fun. In most Zen traditions a teacher is not allowed to teach koan study until he/she has answered all of the traditional formal koans and been tested in public. During such a test, anyone from the audience can come up and challenge the person seeking certification, and the governing Zen Master, or a group of previously certified teachers, decide if the person is adequately prepared to teach. It is like a final exam.
Here is a common everyday sort of teaching koan:
A teacher holds up a bell and asks, "What is this?"
The student silently strikes the bell.
The teacher asks, "Is this (the bell) form or emptiness?"
The student silently strikes the bell.
The teacher asks, "Some people say that this is a physical thing. Is that correct?"
The student silently strikes the bell.
The teacher says, "This sound (strikes the bell) and this sound (strikes the floor with her hand), are they the same or different?"
The student silently strikes the bell and then silently strikes the floor.
IOW, the student has to see through the words and do something or say something that cuts through the normal kind of reflective/cognitive thinking. Words and thoughts are "sticky" so this is not always easy. Sometimes it requires a fair amount of silent contemplation to see through the koan, particularly koans like this:
What was your original face before your mother and father were born?
How can you teach someone who is deaf, dumb, blind, and insensate?
Lots of fun for folks who like this sort of stuff!
