Zoketsu has for years been working on a way of speaking of and working with koans that honors our intelligence and understanding, and the problems of our daily lives, while at the same time not selling short the need to meditate on and spiritually penetrate this great religious literature. As you see, the Everyday Zen Study Guide contextualizes the koan literature in the larger framework of the whole of Buddhist thought, and within the understanding of Dōgen and Suzuki roshi. They are not about arriving at an answer, but to see. The point of the koan is to exhaust the analytic and egoic mind in order to reveal the more intuitive no-mind. Our effort is to let them seep into our bones, to live them. In 1916, a peevish Japanese Zen monk gave himself a pseudonym meaning The Arch-Destroyer of the Existent Order and published a book titled A Critique of Japanese Pseudo-Zen.The book consisted mostly of a blistering attack on Japan’s Rinzai Zen schools and the way they were conducting koan study at the time. The Diamond Sutra Koans are self-paradoxical riddles used as a meditation discipline in Zen Buddhism. ![]() Rather, we read, contemplate, and discuss koans, with the recognition that discursive meanings cannot do full justice to them. This method involves a step-by-step koan curriculum, with answers presented by the student (usually in few words, or in pantomime) in the interview room during retreats. KOAN: The whole meaning of your life is in the current matter. It is not part of our tradition to work with koans in the formalized style that has been popularized in Zen books and is used today by some Zen lineages. KOAN: To advance from where you can no longer advance and to do what can no longer be done, you must make yourself into a raft or ferryboat for others. In this tradition, students are given a koan to meditate on and are expected to work towards a breakthrough, or kensho, in which they achieve a profound understanding of their true nature. ![]() ![]() In Everyday Zen we understand this literature as literature: stories meant to convey spiritual meaning. Over time, koans became an integral part of Zen practice, particularly in the Rinzai school of Zen. The Zen koan literature is a record of such encounter dialogs. It consists, in the main, not of talks or textual homilies but of encounter dialogs between Zen adepts challenging one another to discern the main point of the teachings as it manifests right now, on the spot, in the midst of things. koan: A puzzling, often paradoxical statement, anecdote, question, or verbal exchange, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening.
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