Talk:Koan

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Contents

1 FAQ 2 To do 3 Interpretation section pitfalls 4 Etymology and a play on the words gong/kong? 5 Zhaozhou's tree 101 6 About Xizhong's wheel 7 Huayen precursors to the kung-an 8 "used...as objects" is POV 9 "metanoia" and "faith" deserve discussion 10 Shuryu Suzuki

FAQ

• Is a koan a kind of riddle, puzzle, conundrum, or enigma?

  No. The English language has no synonym for koan. One of the definitions of enigma may be close, but other definitions of enigma don't cut it. So please don't write that.

• What's the correct answer to this koan?

  The correct answer is one's own understanding of the koan. If someone gives you an answer that manages to fool your teacher when you repeat it, what have you learned? And how will you respond to the next one? Perhaps there is no pattern.

• What's the correct interpretation for this koan?

  A koan has no definitive interpretation. However, much context surrounds every koan; in many cases, much of the original meaning is lost without this context. Wikipedians seem to enjoy interpretations and have included some at the bottom of the article. You could also start a page using a short name for a koan, e.g. Baizhang's Fox or Huineng's Flag.

• I've heard the Soto don't use koans.

  Many don't. Some do. There are many sectarian rumours about each sect. Also, use is not exactly the right word to describe the relationship between a Zen practitioner and a koan — though again, English lacks an accurate term.

• Aren't koans an instrument that people use to reach enlightenment? Skillful means and all that? Why not just come out and say it?

  Maybe you are the instrument — consider that. But see Hakuin's "Song of Zazen", which says that cause and effect are the same. Every means is itself an end. Most teachers agree that koans supercede subject-object duality, so the "instrumentalist" view is not helpful.

Some would say this is an example of Zen pedantry and reflects Zen's tendency to obtuseness, obfuscation, and political correctness in refusing to use conventional words in their conventional sense. According to the vast zen literature, many zen students do in fact actually 'use' koans to 'gain' enlightenment whether or not such terms are technically correct from an 'enlightened' point of view. See Philip Kapleau's book Three Pillars of Zen for clear exaples of koan 'usage'.

See The Zen Koan (or Zen Dust) by Miura and Sasaki, pxi; "To say that it is used as a subject of meditation is to state the fact incorrectly". See also Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh, p57: "...we cannot say it is a theme or subject of meditation." See also The Koan, p281, where Victor Hori quotes Hee Jin Kim; they both criticize the "instrumentalist" view of koans, that they are a "means" to something. Hori reiterates this understanding in the introduction to Zen Sand. As the article stands right now, "Koans are often used...to induce an experience of enlightenment..." expresses as fact what is actually a particular POV, refuted by these authors, whose lineage and scholarship are not in question. They do not make obtuse statements; they are quite direct, and they are not made in a context of mystical commentary. Some would say Hakuun's statement was not obtuse either, but a straightforward expresion that every means is itself an end, a theme reiterated in rational western literature. I suggest this issue could be handled in a subsection of the article. I've tried to make sure that all controversial statements in the 1st half of the article are well documented, as you may have noticed. If teachers make many clear statements that koans are "used" and whatnot, perhaps you'd be so kind as to cite some specific examples, and one of us can write a section on "two attitudes about the use of koans" or something like that, OK? --Munge 04:41, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Update: I see that on p12 of Three Pillars of Zen, edited by Philip Kapleau, he writes that koan zazen "must not be confused with...fixing one's mind on an idea or object." This is the same page where the book first explains how to practice with koans. I'll stipulate that he sometimes does write "use koans" or "utilize koans" (p6, p64). But evidently, Kapleau's 'usage' comes with qualifications. --Munge 05:18, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

To do

• Convert all Wade-Giles renderings to Pinyin, but on first incidence, give Wade-Giles renderings and Japanese pronunciation.

• Settle on Book of Serenity or Book of Equanimity or...? Have a decent reason for doing so.

• Move analysis of the wu/mu/no koan to a separate page? Maybe the mu page?

• Explanation of the hua tou (critical phrase)? Or is existing mention enough?

• Explanation of checking questions

• Explanation of capping phrase (jakugo) practice

• The role of Ta Hui Tsung Kao (1089-1163), who provided a lot of written advice for lay students who practiced with koans; regrettably his written material on koans is not completely translated into English, most of what is translated into English appears to be out of print; you can get a little of it if you google Ta Hui and Chun-Fang Yu; more complete sources may be Robert Buswell's book on Chinul, and Miriam Levering's dissertation, which I think also has some material on the next item;

• Women who figure in koans e.g. Iron Grindstone Lu; and women who taught koan practice (e.g. Miao Tao?)

• The role of koans in the martial arts

• Cultural differences among Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Western koan students/practitioners (e.g. Chinese integration with Pure Land; contemporary Japanese literary tradition; reconcilliation with Western naturalistic philosophy? Distinguishing features of study/practice in Korean Son? In Vietnamese Son? Mu as a lifelong practice in some places?)

• If Zen is a separate teaching outside the canon, how did it come to encompass so much literature?

• Can any perplexing or paradoxical situation be a koan?

• The koan in the West and modern koans

• Role of the koan in sectarian rivalry and the competition for patronage (attempting non-sectarian coverage of Northern/Southern, Rinzai/Soto, sudden/gradual controversies).

• Links: Victor Hori (see http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/nlarc/Zen_Sand.htm for link to free [no registration required!] pdf download of the ~100-page introduction to Zen Sand, koan commentary teishos e.g. by Robert Aitken, John Daido Loori (http://www.mro.org/zmm/dharmateachings/dharmateach(daido).html ); interpretation by Steven Heine, Robert Sharf at http://kr.buddhism.org/zen/koan/Robert_Sharf-e.htm (anybody know how to get the Chinese characters to display properly on that one?), key paper on Ta Hui at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-JOCP/jc22069.htm

Interpretation section pitfalls

Why do we have an interpretation of koans section?

...it's not much of an explanation if we make the problem harder for the reader

When the revision happened, the stuff that I thought had value, plus what I just didn't have the heart to delete (including that Gifts thing) got condensed into an Interpretation section. At the time, a few wikipedians wanted very much to play. No problem, and the other sections could be strictly based on research informed by practice. With the aim that any reasonably literate person could parse it. And no pretense of preaching the dharma. It seemed like a good idea at the time but the pitfalls are becoming evident. The interpretation section always had a certain preachiness. It's got that caveat at the beginning, but the danger is there. What is the danger?

First, it's not dangerous for someone who concludes "oh, koans equal metaphor plus folklore", and then they move on to their shopping lists or whatever, I figure they were probably going there anyway, so no problem. And there's no danger if someone is a Zen priest or adept and reads it--I imagine they'd say "amusing horseshit" to just about anything written here. user:munge 18 November 2004

Hahaha! Most likely.

...I expect they'd enjoy cogito ergo sum#Success_of_the_Cogito as well, for possibly different reasons. --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 06:17, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The danger is if an actual spiritual seeker is taken by this stuff and gets a false sense of security that this is an opening for them, they get it, the dog, the bowl, the three pounds of flax that may or may not be a monk's robe. If their curiousity, their doubt, isn't stoked but is instead partially satisfied, dampened. The classic Zen proverb about it is "pictures of food can't satisfy hunger". The best thing that could happen for the actual seeker is if the article either leaves them in their present state of doubt, or if it does throw them into a greater state of doubt. The issue for that person isn't if it gets harder. The issue is, does it get hard enough for them to get their ass on a cushion.

I know that's not the encyclopedist's job. But, if Ta Hui did indeed burn the printing blocks to the Blue Cliff Record, if that story's true--now I know why.

So in that sense it may not be much of an article if, in a certain sense, if makes things seem easier.

user:munge 18 November 2004

I agree. It's really tempting to burn all the text about Zen; after all, nothing external can truly be the cause for a student's realization. But if all the Zen monks had avowed silence, choosing to keep secret what they had discovered — or if Siddhartha Gautama had chosen that, long ago when he despaired of anyone understanding — then nobody today would have the privilege of knowing there might be something more to consciousness than what everyone takes for granted. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Instead, we have a vast body of literature which nobody understands at all. Most people can't even comprehend the least part of the riddle we've been left with, and there are very few who could help them. Isn't it the encyclopedia's role to provide the best answers known to anyone who might ask? Shouldn't the world's largest encyclopedia contain, somewhere, the clearest, fullest explanation of Zen yet developed?

And, if the best explanation is we don't know either, shouldn't we simply state the facts we do know, rather than throw out philosophical jargon to divert the readers' attentions toward something they won't understand any better? --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 06:07, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As an example of what I feel the article should strive for, please see One Drop Reveals the Ocean (http://www.mro.org/zmm/dharmateachings/talks/shugen16.htm), in which Geoffrey Shugen Arnold presents a much clearer explanation of why Zhaozhou's Cypress is a koan, and why the monk's later denial is also a koan. --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 18:51, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What do you suppose Arnold is saying? The part about water seeing/speaking water is right on. Yet, who knows what it meant to Dogen. We can't get past knowing that we are mostly water...I doubt if Dogen knew that. And you can filter out 100% of Arnold's stuff about environmentalism as POV, IMO. I mean, it's lovely, but POV nonetheless. As skillful means of engaging with contemporary Western and Japanese students, it's skillful alright. But as for demolishing delusions, Robert Sharf, in the flawed yet nevertheless excellent http://kr.buddhism.org/zen/koan/Robert_Sharf-e.htm solidly debunks the idea that the "nature" in "Buddha nature" meant what it means to today's environmentalists. Environmentalism was alien to Zhaozhou because it wasn't an issue. The Chinese vocabulary did not distinguish nature and culture as we do. What was Zhaozhou's actual attitude toward the Budda-nature of non-human entities? What was Dogen's? I'm working on it. It's taking me a few years, however. user:munge 22 November 2004

*grin*

I agree; the environmentalism stuff is a nice way of giving Westerners some context, but in itself it isn't particularly interesting (aside from being very elegant). The most insightful part of his talk is in three paragraphs, including the part about "water seeing water":

When Zhaozhou said, The cypress tree in the yard, what did he see that made him declare, "This is the true meaning of your nature, of Chan Buddhism, of reality?" This koan is an excerpt from a longer exchange. The monk asked, "What is the living meaning of Chan?" Zhaozhou answered, "The cypress tree in the yard." The monk continued, "Teacher, don't use an object to guide people." In other words, don't use something that's bound to the subjective world. Zhaozhou said, "I'm not using an object to guide you." The monk proceeded, "Very well, then, what's the meaning of Chan?" Zhaozhou said, "The cypress tree in the yard." It was the monk who was using an object; he couldn't free himself of the tree so that he might realize the tree.

(Zhaozhou has been very kind.)

Once, a student of Zhaozhou went to Master Fayan's place. Fayan asked him, "Where have you come from?" The monk said, "From Zhaozhou." Fayan said, "I hear that Zhaozhou has a saying, ‘The cypress tree in the yard.' Is this so?" The monk exclaimed, "No." Fayan pursued this, "Everyone who's been around says that a monk asked him the meaning of Chan and Zhaozhou said, ‘The cypress tree in the yard.' How can you deny this?" The monk said, "Master Zhaozhou really didn't say this. Please don't slander him." What was the monk saying? Don't try to come to life in the words, don't turn this dharma into a commodity.

This is context which is valuable to everyone, regardless of how they feel about the environment or anything else. Wu-Men's Case 37 becomes dull by comparison; he left out the most important part of the story! In this context, too, the monk's denial becomes much more interesting, as one can see that he gained something from Zhaozhou, and see the denial might not be as straightforward as it appears. --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 10:16, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As for the monk's later denial, my impression is that it's part of commentary (and, I suspect, a checking question for Zhaozhou's tree). To call the denial a koan opens up the can of worms. If it is a koan (I'm not saying it's not) then what is not a koan? Note that "can anything be a koan" is on the to-do list. To keep the problem from exploding, I think wikipedic energy is best directed toward koans that are indisputably koans. As noted above, I see three possible ways to qualify: 1) Having a case number in a classic koan collection, 2) being universally accepted as oral tradition (as in the sound of one hand), or 3) otherwise having a strong historical basis (Yuanwu's own first koan, Little Jade, which deserves ever so much more attention than it gets IMO). Being able to settle whether the monk's denial is a koan or commentary...being able to handle Alice's encounter with the caterpillar, etc., as a koan (I'm aware of 2 teachers, not affiliated with each other, who have assigned it as such)...but is this really a priority? user:munge 22 November 2004

I found a reference to this, finally: it's noted in Zen and Zen Classics: Selections from R. H. Blyth by Frederick Franck, page 75, ISBN 0394724895; apparently referencing Zen and Zen Classics: Twenty-Five Essays by R. H. Blyth, ISBN 0893460524.

Apparently this also contains the following entertaining version of Zhaozhou's Dog, which leaves the previous discussion about Wú even more uncertain:

Joshu asked the zen-man, Sekito, "Does a dog have Buddha-Nature?"

Sekito answered, "Shut your mouth! No barking like a dog, please."

A zen-man once asked Joshu, "Does a dog have Buddha-Nature?"

Joshu answered, "No!"

--[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 10:44, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Etymology and a play on the words gong/kong?

Someone modified the etymology section, noting that kung an could have been a play on words. Namely, kung sounds like kong, a Chinese word for emptiness (I believe that kong = 空, as distinct from the gong 公 in kung-an or gong-an). Was that term "kong" used as an equivalent for the Sanskrit sunya during the Tang and Sung dynasties? That could support the claim there was a play on words. Otherwise, maybe not. A reference would help.

What would also really help would be for someone to straighten out the problem of kung-fu an-tu (Chinese) seeming to have 4 characters, and ko-fu no an toku (Japanese) seeming to have 5 or maybe 6 characters, so they can't quite be equivalent.

The Chinese and Japanese are kind of equivalent. The "no" in Japanese is used like the 's in English. i.e. the document of the official desk or the official's document. Chinese writing often drop the use of the 's as abbreviation. It can be there or it can be understood. The Chinese tu is pronounced as toku in Japanese, so it is actually 4 characters in both cases, but the Japanese added a "no" in the middle as a connector.

Thanks once again! -user:munge 08:07 UMT 7 December 2004

Note how difficult it is to get the facts straight, let alone the speculations. user:munge 22 November 2004

After considering this, I decided to delete the remark. As it stood, the edit contained a clearly false statement because the two Chinese characters are different. The person said it was a "separate tradition". Couldn't have been because of the two different characters. Above, I speculated "play on words". I don't know why I was trying to be nice when they never said that. I'm not going to try to fix someone's obviously wrong statement based on my speculation. I have another speculation that isn't as kind anyway, which I will omit to spell out. user:munge 02:66 UMT 6 December 2004

Zhaozhou's tree 101

According to http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm (I suggest that Wikipedians may not want to link articles there unless one can confirm it doesn't violate the copyright held by Sekida and Grimstone), the main case of Wumenkuan #37 reads: 趙州、因僧問、如何是祖師西來意。州云、庭前栢樹子。(One of my teachers told me that the original has no punctuation marks. Be that as it may...)

I tentatively translate this as "Zhaozhou, because a monk asked, when the founder of the sect came from the west, what was his intended meaning? Zhou said, the (young?) tree in the courtyard." Tradition holds that Bodhidharma came to China from India, perhaps around 500 C.E.

I am relying on a Chinese-English dictionary. According to that dictionary, 祖師 (zushi) means "founder (of a school or sect)". (Copy and paste the 2 characters above into the 3rd text box on the Search page of http://zhongwen.com, submit characters, click on first character, go down a few lines and you'll see it.) As far as I can tell (I do not speak Chinese) there is no implication of gender (such as with zufu "grandfather" or zumu "grandmother"). The rendering "patriarch" appears to be one of those all-too-common artifacts from the age when Zen texts in translation made endless apologias and drew highly questionable parallels to the Bible.

Strangely, the tree (shuzi) is not the same character pair that the dictionary gives for cypress (boshu), and not the character for oak (xiang). That diminutive 子 also appears in the wu/mu koan. I've wondered about that (little dog? son-of-a-bitch? even the slightest [bit of buddha nature])? Nevertheless, I have also noticed (as pointed out in note 10 of koan) that Japanese teachers/translators do render it as "oak" (Sekida/Grimstone, Senzaki/Reps, Shibayama/Kudo, Yamada) while English-speaking translators from the Chinese tend to render it as "cypress" (Aitken, T. Cleary including in Cleary's rendering of case #47 of the Congronglu/Tsungjunglu/Shoyoroku/Book of Serenity, which appears to have the same main case as Wumenkuan #37). Blyth also renders as "oak". Apparently, teachers don't believe the type of tree is important.

-user:munge 26 November 2004

I've seen it translated as bamboo sometimes, but I think it must be cypress (栢樹).

a-HA. (*^_^*) I hadn't noticed, but zhongwen.com didn't take that first character (栢). Then I read somewhere 栢 is an alternate for 柏. And indeed, zhongwen.com renders cypress as 柏樹. -user:munge 28 November 2004

Japanese translators see oak instead because that is the meaning of 栢 in Japanese, but of course Wu-men didn't write "oak". "Little cypress tree", maybe?

And yes, the exact type of tree probably isn't all that important. --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 12:42, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps nothing that a student thinks about it is important. Wumen's verse: 言無展事/語不投機/承言者喪/滯句者迷. Tentatively (and too hastily, I'm sure) I'd render that as "Words don't express the matter/speech doesn't convey the subtlety/accepting language one comes to grief/stagnant, at a loss for words, a confused person". Several translators (Aitken, Sekida/Grimstone, Shibayama/Kudo) appear to translate 承 as "attached" (to speech), but not others (such as Cleary or Blyth).

The parallel to the tradition of Shakyamuni awakening under the Bodhi tree is impossible to ignore. But Wumen's warning should completely dowse any notion that the koan can be explained by reference to history, folklore, philosophy, psychology, linguistic theory...

And despite the reference to mountains, rivers, and oceans in the Book of Serenity's commentary, there seems to be no justification for seeing Zhaozhou's response as pointing to "nature". That commentary gives equal time to cultural phenomena--boats, statues, and carts. As I don't have the original, I'll quote from Cleary's translation "...still the cart is made to fit the groove..." and "Buying all the current fashions without putting down any money". (The latter are the final words of the commentary.) I have no idea what any of that means, only that it obviously doesn't mean anything about reverence for the earth or ecology. (See http://terebess.hu/english/borup.html for more on "reverse orientalism", or "Zen and the art of telling Western audiences what they want to hear".)

In its commentary to the koan, the Book of Serenity also cites the story wherein Huijiao, asked by Fayan about Zhaozhou's tree, responded "The late master really didn't say this; please don't slander him."

The 'Sayings of Zhaozhou' records another dialogue about the tree:

A monk asked, "Does the oak tree have Buddha-nature or not?"

The master said "It has."

The monk said "When will it become Buddha?"

Zhaozhou said "When the world ends."

The monk said "When will the world end?"

Zhaozhou said "When the oak tree becomes Buddha."

(The above is similar to fragment #305 of The Recorded Sayings of Chao-Chou, translated by James Green, and to commentary to case #37 in 'The Gateless Barrier', Robert Aitken, p230)

A great deal more can be said regarding Zhaozhou's tree, in terms of the history, folklore, philosophy of Chan/Zen, and contemporary scholarship regarding Buddha nature. Fortuntely, this has nothing to do with the koan itself. Commentary (notably by Shibayama, Aitken, and others) strongly emphasizes Wumen's point that the koan is incomprehensible. The traditional interpretation is that Zhaozhou was pointing to a living experience that supercedes comprehension and discourse. Indeed, the longer record (similar to Green, p15-16) says the monk responded to Zhaozhou "please don't use objects to teach." And Zhaozhou responded "I don't use objects to teach." "In that case, when the founder of the sect came from the west, what was his intended meaning? Zhou said, the tree in the courtyard."

In a famous mondo, a student asked Linchi (aka Rinzai) the same (approximately the same?) question, "what was the intended meaning of the founder...?" Linchi responded something like "If the founder had any intention, he couldn't even have saved himself". (Similar to p68 of The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi, Burton Watson's translation of the recorded sayings of Linchi.)

One might not be too far off to say that Zhaozhou's intention is to disrupt the student's thought processes. Try just sitting with not knowing. Otherwise, I'll go to hell for this.

-user:munge 26 November 2004

About Xizhong's wheel

Here are some notes about the wheel of Xizhong (Wade-Gile Hsi-Chung, Hepburn Keichu). As some of you may have noticed, I use the discussion page as a staging area for the main article. This is very un-wikipedian but I don't know another way. It's too hard to do research and prepare text in final form at the same time. If you are so inclined, feel free to jump in and wikify, add Chinese characters, dates of birth, verified historical verse commentaries on this particular koan, etc., if you are so inclined.

Translators vary wildly regarding the spokes/wheels/cart. Aitken, Blyth, and Yamada have a "hundred carts". Paul Reps has it as two wheels of fifty spokes each. T. Cleary, Sekida/Grimstone, and Shibayama (as well as Stryk/Levering user:munge 05:12 UTC 11 Dec 2004) use words to the effect of "a cart having wheels with a hundred spokes each". The Chinese characters apparently translate literally as "cart 100 spoke".

The only main line Rinzai priest among the above commentators, Shibayama, asserts (p.73) about Xizhong "...in the days of Emporer U of the Ka dynasty...he made a grand cart whose wheels had a hundred spokes and amazed the people". (Is this U the same character as yu, the converse of wu/mu?) In any event, Xizhong was a mythical figure, a contemporary of Canjie, who invented the Chinese alphabet.

Apparently, little biographical information is available about Getsuan/Gettan/Yueh-an/Yuean of the Linji lineage of Chan/Zen. Yuean was the teacher of the teacher of Yuelin, who was Wumen's teacher. (Perhaps the story was passed down orally 3 generations from teacher to student, rather than recorded in a prior collection, lamp history, recorded sayings, or similar document.)

The wheel implies some common images of the Buddhist and Indian worldview, especially cyclic rebirth. However, the image of removing a wheel invokes a particular Buddhist convention, the story of King Milinda and the Buddhist monk Nagasena, told (with "interminable...detail" according to Blyth) in the Milindapanha (Questions of Milinda). Borges (with characteristic economy of style) retells it as follows: "...as the King's chariot is neither the wheels nor the chassis, neither the axle, the shaft, nor the yoke, so man is not matter, form, perception, ideas, instinct, or consciousness. He is neither the combination of these parts nor does he exist apart from them...after two days of discussion or catechism, he converted the King, who put on the yellow robe of a Buddhist monk." (see for example, "The Dialogues of Ascetic and King", in Selected Non-Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, p384, cf p348, cf p3). The cart is not the same, not different from its parts; the truth is not one and not two. The view of nonduality is just as much a view, an illusion, as the view of duality. This is apparent from the mental experiment of removing the parts of the cart.

One might say that the contemplation of Xizhong's wheel koan reveals relationships among cart and parts, among ourselves and our parts, and among ourselves and other parts of the world that are not expressible using language. One cannot invoke the meaning of the koan by appealing either to illusory undifferentiated wholes nor to illusory boundaries among parts. -user:munge 09:09 UTC 7 December 2004, a day that will live in infamy because I'm going to hell for this

Huayen precursors to the kung-an

See The significance of paradoxical language in Hua-yen Buddhism (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/dale.htm), Dale S. Wright, Philosophy East and West, July 1982, pp325-338. That link is missing a page or two of the article, including the notes. Key quote: "...the origins of the kung-an in the Ch'an school can be traced to paradoxical language in Hua-yen texts as well as in other lines of Mahayana thought." --Munge 03:58, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"used...as objects" is POV

Koans are used by Zen practitioners as objects of meditation to induce an experience of enlightenment or realization.

I deleted this sentence. It may seem very petty, but I believe that the sentence is POV of a particular "instrumentalist" attitude that is not shared by all Zen teachers/practitioners. In fact, I am not aware of traditional sources that use that kind of language, only modern ones in English. Moreover I suspect very few if any Zen teachers actually believe it can be taken literally.

In The Zen Koan, p281, Victor Hori quotes Hee Jin Kim (I think it refers to Kim's Dogen Kigen, Mystical Realist) who calls this attitude the "instrumentalist" view of koans, a view that they are a "means" to something. Hori and Kim do not endorse this attitude. It is my understanding that Hori is not merely a scholar; he trained hard for decades and remains committed to practice. As for Kim, I don't know about him personally but find his writing to be top notch. I also find the "instrumentalist" POV directly contradicts Hakuuin Ekaku's Song of Zazen, which identifies means as equal to ends; and it contradicts my understanding of Buddha Nature doctrine, which I think identifies practice as transformation.

The current article might eventually benefit from a discussion of the instrumentalist position, though I don't find it a priority bec. discussing misunderstandings is endless. I note that in Zen Keys, Thich Nhat Hanh presents an instrumentalist position first as an upaya; then he seemingly retracts it, positing it as a provisional teaching, a step toward a more complete understanding that is ultimately expressed without subject/object relationships. I'll further speculate that the "instrumentalist" position has parallels to the emphasis on cause-and-effect posited by the exponents of Critical Buddhism.

--Munge 08:26, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This may be an example of the rivalry between the Northern and Southern schools of early Zen, discussed by Jeffrey L. Broughton in The Bodhidharma Anthology. The instrumentalist view seems to have been a point of contention between the schools; Master Yüan, a disciple of Bodhidharma whose ideas seem to have carried over to the Southern School, viewed ingenious artifice or ch'iao-wei as an obstacle to developing wisdom. On the other hand, the Northern School practiced gradualist, step-by-step teaching, and seems to have carried the instrumentalist position.

The Northern School had been developed by Shen-hsiu, while the Southern School was founded by Hui-neng, the traditional sixth patriarch. In their time, an interesting rivalry developed between the two schools: Shen-hsiu's disciple P'u-chi declared the Northern School to be in fact the Southern School, Shen-hsiu to be the real sixth patriarch, and himself to be the seventh. This was not tolerated by the Southern School; in the Platform Talks or T'an-yü, Shen-hui rejected these claims and stressed that correct practice was "no-examining" (pu-kuan) rather than "gazing" (k'an) as in the meditation of the Northern School. The original Southern School prevailed, and this may have biased views against the instrumentalist methods. In particular, Dogen would naturally share the views of the Southern School. User:Eequor/Signature/Syllabic 22:22, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I want to read Broughton, haven't got around to it. Now I agree, from other things I've read, the self-styled Southern School was, by all appearances, anti-instrumentalist, as was Dogen. (You have kind of a knack for these doctrinal classifications, don't you?). That said, I have hoped we can keep the "Northern vs. Southern" debate out of the koan article because the "Northern School" strikes me as an invention of Shenhui; on request, I'll supply cites of McRae, Faure, and others. Of course, it is certainly part of Zen/Chan self-understanding that there was a degenerate "Northern School" which advocated gradualism, quietism, other isms said to be deficient by the winners who ended up writing the history. But an early dialogue found at Dunhuang in the early 20th, translated by Cleary in Zen Dawn, is evidence of a supposed Northerner advocating in favor of sudden, not gradualist position. And there's more like that in Ceasing of Notions translated by Soko Morinaga. My impression is that the invasion of the North by the Khans was what really did in the people who were labeled as being of the Northern School. --Munge 07:13, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"metanoia" and "faith" deserve discussion

an experience of metanoia or radical change of consciousness and perspective, from the point of view of which the koan 'question' is resolved, and the practitioner's religious faith is enhanced.

I intend to modify this later. "Metanoia" is colorful, but unnecessarily obscure; maybe "personal transformation" will do, as it alludes to probable Yogacara influences on the koan, in contrast to a probably unrelated Greek tradition. I would like to hear from other Wikipedians about the significance of faith in koan study/practice. Just how did the founders of the school intend us to have "faith"?

--Munge 08:26, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Faith seems a poor word; in Buddhism, the idea it usually represents is based on one's own understanding and verification of one's beliefs, which would be better represented by confidence. Faith is belief without supporting evidence; confidence is belief in what one has previously observed to be true. There are some beliefs which must be taken on faith initially, but this is not "blind faith": one has the expectation that one's beliefs will eventually be verifiable, but one also accepts the possibility that they may be incorrect, and, in any case, remains critical. This follows the Kalama Sutra [1] (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/anguttara/an03-065.html), in which Gautama Buddha instructs the Kalamas (and, by extension, his followers) to not accept anything merely on faith. User:Eequor/Signature/Syllabic 23:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Confidence does appeal; how about "personal transformation that resolves the koan's mystery and stimulates the practitioner's confidence in and committment to Buddhist practice". However, translators often link faith with Linji, and the title of the famous poem attributed to the 4th ancestor, Sengcan's is often translated as "Faith in Mind"; not to mention the Awakening of Mahayana Faith. I think they meant confidence,conviction, and trust, as opposed to "belief without evidence". But I don't know. Struggling with my own, perhaps western bias. Now, I certainly have an affinity for the Kalama but have been criticized on another page for being "diachronic". (I thought it was a good thing! I guess it's not always.) In fact, I have not been able to demonstrate one way or the other that the Chinese of the generations that we are talking about (say, 6th to 13th century) were familliar with the Nikayas. Clues appreciated. --Munge 07:42, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Shuryu Suzuki

The information about Shunryu Suzuki is not right. He did have a green bird in a cage, but a cat ate it. He probably regretted not releasing it, but the bird died in captivity. --Defenestrate 18:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)