What is a koan? A beginner's guide
What Zen koans are, where they come from, and how to sit with one without trying to solve it.
A koan is a short story, exchange or question from the Zen Buddhist tradition, used as a focus for practice. The best known is probably “What is the sound of one hand?” Others are tiny scenes: a student asks a sincere question, and the teacher answers with something that seems to have nothing to do with it.
Koans are often described as riddles. That is a little misleading. A riddle has a clever answer that ends the puzzle. A koan is not meant to be answered that way at all.
Where koans come from
The word is the Japanese form of the Chinese gong’an, meaning a public case, in the sense of a legal precedent. Koans began as records of conversations between Chan (Zen) teachers and students in China, mostly during the Tang dynasty, from the seventh to the tenth centuries.
Later teachers gathered these cases into collections and added commentary and verse. The most widely read are:
- The Gateless Gate (Wumenguan), 48 cases compiled by Wumen Huikai in 1228
- The Blue Cliff Record (Biyan Lu), 100 cases, compiled in the twelfth century
- The Book of Serenity (Congrong Lu), 100 cases, from the thirteenth century
In eighteenth-century Japan, Hakuin Ekaku revived and organized koan practice in the Rinzai school, and gave the tradition its most famous question about the single hand.
What a koan is for
A koan gives the thinking mind something it cannot settle. Take this one from The Gateless Gate. A monk asks Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Zhaozhou answers, “Mu,” a word that means something like “no” or “not.” Buddhist teaching says all beings have Buddha nature, so the answer seems wrong. Yet “yes” would have missed the point as well.
The student is asked to stay with that knot. Not to analyze it, but to keep it close, on the cushion and off it, until the habit of sorting everything into yes and no loosens. In traditional training this is done over months or years with a teacher, who checks the student’s understanding in private meetings.
How to sit with a koan as a beginner
You do not need to be a Zen student to get something from koans. Used lightly, they are a way of holding a question without rushing to close it.
- Read it once, slowly. Then put the screen down.
- Sit for two minutes. Follow your breath, and let the koan sit in the background.
- Do not solve it. When explanations arrive, and they will, notice them and let them pass.
- Carry it. Bring one phrase with you into the day and see where it turns up.
If a koan leaves you with a feeling of not knowing, that is not a sign you are doing it wrong. One old case says so directly: “Not knowing is most intimate.”
Good ones to start with
Short koans and sayings are the easiest way in. A few favorites:
There is a new one on the daily koan page each day, with a short note on how to sit with it.
A note on respect
Koans belong to a living religious tradition. Reading them on your own is a fine way to meet that tradition, and it is not the same thing as formal koan study with a teacher. If they speak to you, a local Zen center is the place to go further.