Oakville Zen Meditation
A koan is a short story, a sentence, a parable, an image, a few words, a dialogue, a riddle that, at first glance, does not make any sense, being perceived as absurd, illogical, crazy, aberrant, or meaningless. Example: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Koans were created in the 13th century in China by Chinese Buddhist Zen Masters. More than 4,000 of them are still used by various Zen Schools, especially the Japanese ones. Many of them
compiled in a book called “The Gateless Gate.”
Purpose of Koan:
It is given by the Zen teacher to students to assess their ability to free themselves from being trapped all the time by their ego-driven, conceptual, and cognitive thinking mind.
Disconnecting from our thinking mind is the main requirement to experience our genuine Self and achieve Awakening. This is what we do while meditating.
Teacher and student meet one-on-one regularly. It is called a private interview.
Once the koan is given by the teacher, the student must "solve" it and give her/his answer to the teacher. Finding the answer may take a few min. to a few months.
How to solve the koan?
Again, solving a koan by using an acquired, analytic, conventional, cognitive, deductive, logical, and rational, intelligent analysis is impossible and doomed to fail all the time because of the koan’s design. Such thinking will be rejected by the teacher immediately.
What is the approach then?
If an IQ-based answer is useless, what is the approach then?
The solution can be reached only by using "sort of “thoughtless thinking" made of ignorance, doubt, and mostly intuition rather than using analytic, cognitive, deductive intellectual reasoning.
Without the discovery of our genuine original self, the keys to open the door towards Awakening cannot be found.
How does the teacher assess the student's progress?
The spiritual progress made by the student to solve her/his koan is assessed by her/his verbal, non-verbal, and intuitive behavior while interacting with the teacher, and not by her/his cognitive rhetorical thinking because, again, any overthinking intellectual answer will be rejected by the teacher.
So, how do you know that the student's answer is okay?
Since there is almost no dialogue per se during the interview, the teacher will never comment specifically positively or negatively on the answer given by the student.
If the answer does not satisfy the teacher, she/he may remain silent, thank the student, and
ask her/his to leave the room to, for example, to prepare the tea ceremony in the Zendo.
The only clue telling the student that the teacher appreciated the answer is... by giving another koan to be solved...usually up to 10. max in total.
As a student put it: “ It looks like I did okay with the koan, but .......I don’t know how”.
Remember this: in Zen, cultivating a “don’t know mind” is an important skill to reach serenity and not
trying to be stupid. A koan is teaching what "a don't know mind" means, and how to practice it.
Is there another way to assess the spiritual journey of a student?
Yes. Attendance in meditation class and interaction during Dharma talks are important. THANKS
