Published on July 31, 2025 6:35 AM GMT
(This is a series of comments that has been turned into a post.)
The context
The following exchange is context for the questions at the end of this post. (Quote blocks in italics are from me; quote blocks in non-italics are from another user.)
(Scroll down to the next section if you just want to see the questions.)
I admire koan practice in Zen as an attempt to make sure people are reaching genuine insights without being able to fully capture them in explicit words.
Can you say more about this? I don’t think I quite follow.
Koans are “riddles” that are supposed to only be understandable by “insight,” a non-cognitive form of knowledge attained by entering “don’t know mind.” Meditating on koans “confuses the rational mind” so that it is easier to enter “don’t know mind.” Koan training consists of being given a koan by a master (the first one I ever received was “what is the meaning of [smacks hand into ground]?”), letting the koan confuse you and relaxing into that feeling, letting go of all the thoughts that try to explain, and then one day having the answer pop into your awareness (some schools have people concentrate on the koan, others say to just create the conditions for insight and it will come). If you explain your insight to a master and they think you’ve figured it out (they often say “used up”) that koan, they give you a new one that’s even further from everyday thinking. And so it continues until you’ve gone through enough of the hundreds of koans in that lineage.
It’s a cool system because “getting” your koan is an objectively observable indicator of progress at meditation, which is otherwise quite difficult to assess.
Ok, but how exactly does “make sure people are reaching genuine insights”? Are there canonical correct answers to koans? (But that would seem to violate the “without being able to fully capture them in explicit words” clause…)
In other words, how do you know when you’ve correctly understood a koan? (When an answer pops into your awareness, how do you know it’s the right one?) And, what does it mean to correctly understand a koan? (What’s the difference between correctly understanding a koan and incorrectly understanding it?)
It’s a cool system because “getting” your koan is an objectively observable indicator of progress at meditation, which is otherwise quite difficult to assess.
Could you elaborate on this? I am confused by this point.
Masters have an oral tradition of assessing the answers to koans and whether they reflect genuine insight. They use the answers people give to guide their future training.
Having used up a few koans, I’d say the answers come to you pretty clearly. You get to a certain point in meditation and the koan suddenly makes sense in light of that.
By what means do the masters assess whether the answers reflect “genuine insight”?
Is there a way for a non-master to evaluate whether a given answer to a koan is correct, or to show that the ostensibly-correct answer is correct? (Analogously to P vs. NP—if the correct answer is difficult to determine, is it nonetheless straightforward to verify?)
If the answer to the previous question is “no”, then how is one to know whether the ostensibly-correct answer is, in fact, actually correct?
It’s not really a question of factually correct. The koan is designed to make sense on a non-cognitive, non-rational level. My experience was that I would have a certain insight on my own when I was meditating and then I would realize that that’s what the koan was talking about. What makes a good koan is that you’re totally stumped when you first hear it, but when it clicks you know that’s the right answer. That’s why one English translation is “riddle.” Some riddles have correct answers according to the terms they lay out, but really what makes a riddle is the recognition of a lateral thinking move, even if it’s as simple as a pun. Koans are “riddles” that require don’t-know mind.
The koan is designed to make sense on a non-cognitive, non-rational level.
What is the content of whatever “insight” or “sense” it is that’s gained when you “get the right answer” to a koan? I do not see what it could mean to say that one has gained such an insight…
Some questions:
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The questions
The above, again, is context. These questions are the point of this post:
Does it ever happen that someone “gets” a koan—it “clicks” for them, and they “know” that the answer they’ve got is “the right answer”—but actually, their answer differs from the canonically “correct” answer?
Alternatively: does it ever happen that two different people both “get” a koan—it “clicks” for them both—but their answers differ?
Do Zen teachers/masters ever disagree on what the “right” answer to a koan is? If so—how do they resolve this disagreement?
Suppose I were to say to a Zen teacher: you say the answer to this koan is X, but I think it is actually Y. Please demonstrate to me that it is as you say, and not as I say. How might they do this?
Discuss
