lucid koans

[samzen05]

hi there

last night I watched “spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring” a buddhist film in nature. After when I went to sleep I got ideas for some koans which I though up as I was falling alseep almost as if they weren’t my ideas. I wild myself to sleep and was lucid and explored the world the film showed me.

[Icelos]

How about some details? What are the koans you made, and how did you use them?

[Iluminada]

and what are koans?

[Bruno]

@Some Wikipedia editor

A koan (pronounced /ko.an/) is a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to Intuition. Koans are often used by Zen practitioners as objects of meditation to induce an experience of enlightenment or realization, and by Zen teachers as testing questions when a student wishes to validate their experience of enlightenment.

A famous koan is, “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?” (oral tradition, attributed to Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), considered a reviver of the koan tradition in Japan)…

Koans are said to reflect the enlightened or awakened state of historical sages and legendary figures who uttered them, and sometimes said to confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness or 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.

—Wikipedia – “Koan”

[StEvE21]

This is interesting…
So does anyone know what a good answer would be for that specific koan? Also, would it be possible for the average person to understand the answer to one of these koans if an enlightened person told them?

[Bruno]

No it wouldn’t, because the answers are personal. They reflect the way you see the world. In fact, there are no true answers, because the point of koans is to make you think without words (as there are no words to describe the true answer) and therefore clear your mind, leading you to enlightment.

[StEvE21]

So how would the person saying the koan, ex. a Zen teacher, know if their student has reached enlightenment through the use of a koan, if the teachers response and the students response would be different for each koan. Or is it the student who decides if they have reached enlightenment?

[Bruno]

You just feel the thaaaaang.

For example, when someone asked me what’s the sond of one hand clapping, I promptly said “half a sound of two hands clapping”. That’s NOT enlightment. But it is a nifty answer.

But when I was aked what was my face before I was born, I had this weird feeling. The more I thought about it, the stronger the feeling. I didn’t reach enlightment—I don’t feel so. But, to me, there was something lying behind that question. Something strong.

You should look for a zen temple. There you’ll have it really better than my rational explanations. And do learn what lies behind the Japanese tea cerimony if you decide to start a search for enlightment. That, the tea cerimony—that’s enlighting.