Tag Archives: koan

Unknown's avatar

koan konfusion

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One of the struggles during Rohatsu was the question of continuing with the Chaplaincy program.  There’s definitely a lot of ego involved in the decision, which ever way it goes.  The typical way to approach this is to set up the scales that will weigh out the options.  If I were my patient, that’s certainly what I’d suggest.  And I definitely (knowing the kind of patient I am) would not expect compliance.  Which is good because the point of suggesting an exercise is not to get compliance but rather to see if comprehension can bubble to the surface.  But that requires a level of subtlety and trust in the unobservable process of mind.

Like a koan.

Jay Haley, master of prescribing the symptom and a mystic of paradoxes, would have made a great Zen master.  He would have sent me out of his office with the injunction that I was NOT, absolutely NOT to make any decisions – no peas or carrots decisions, no red or green sweater decisions, none.  Life would be reduced to one gigantic ball of indecision that I could neither swallow nor throw up.  Luckily, I could never afford Haley as a therapist and have to settle for me.

I’m more of the School of Sledgehammer Therapy.  Don’t get me wrong, I can do the subtle stuff: so what do you notice when you consider the possibility of going back for a second year?  But very quickly, as I watch my mind careen and collide against rapidly expanding if-then flowcharts in my skull, I lose patience.  Subtlety and support go out the window and the Big Stick of Reality comes out.

In this case, reality is not an actuarial count of yeah and nay.  And that makes it tough.  Reality is that comprehension requires indecision.  Unable to tolerate indecision, I take refuge in the intellect.  What symptoms could I prescribe to get under the intellectual grip of the problem?  10, 000 prostrations (not a bad idea; Enkyo roshi spoke of bows being good for a narcissist)?  Copying 108 sutras in Pali (sure; got all the time in world to do that for the next three months).  Circumambulate the Shwe Dagon Pagoda (not likely; the barn will have to do)?  Sit another 7 day sesshin (hah!  and develop another obsession with red toenails)?

Thankfully, I know me too well some days.  The decision will not surface as the endpoint of an intellectual exercise.  It certainly will not emerge through introspection or being open to the universe (all that does is have my brains fall out anyway).  Like the morning star that pierced Shakyamuni all the way through to the ancient layers of his being, comprehension will surface and work its magic in its own time.

In the meantime, a few prostrations, sutra copying, mindful trekking through the woods couldn’t hurt.

Unknown's avatar

koan konundrums

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Koans are interesting, I suppose.  I finally figured that trying to understand how they work is like being pregnant and wanting to know what it’s going to feel like to deliver the baby.  (You gentlemen out there will have to find a gender appropriate metaphor, I fear.)  In my dark and shady past, I was a freelance writer and wrote a cover article on the journey from discovering we were pregnant to discovering Frank was to blame for the pain and agony of delivery.  Truth be known, the article was a itself a cover.  What I really wanted was to know what delivery was going to be like.  So, I approached it with my usual researcher’s mind.  I read, consulted mothers and mothers-to-be, and in that process, discovered that the territory of delivering babies was shrouded in mysterious terminology and enough mystic rites to baffle the Greeks.

Koans, I realize, are like that too.  No point in asking anyone because it’s just not given to language.  When I read up on how to work with a koan, it seemed one part obsession, one part indoctrination, one part self-hypnosis – all guaranteed to result in a mental repetitive strain injury.  The usual injunction is to repeat the koan (Mu, for example) in every moment.  I tried that.  The only thing that happened was an overwhelming urge for alfalfa sprouts and a tendency to lie down when I thought it was going to rain.  Clearly simple repetition was not quite all there was to koan work.

I did try for a while with a Zen teacher and that broke through a couple of things.  I could be coy here and say you have to go through it yourself.  But the truth is, it wouldn’t be coy; I really don’t know what it was I went through.  I figured out Mu (actually, vice versa), went on to a couple of others and then got stymied on the subtle sound of the single hand.  Figuring I was just too intellectual for the deeper and more nuance awakening, I returned to my ham-fisted practice which became rather comforting.  Besides, it’s good for a narcissist to fail once in a while.

Over the years however, having stopped trying to find koans, it seems koans have found me.  Somewhere in the middle of Rohatsu, some time after roshi posed the question, “What is the difference between a Chaplain and a Psychologist?” the mystery of how a koan works unravelled.  It’s not about repetition.  It’s definitely not about obsessing. It is most definitely not about knowing.

It turns out that the question she posed is not a koan (but you knew that already).  It is simply the ground on which a koan can act.  The critical point is which koan can bring to bear sufficient weight to crack open the question so that the question in turn can drive the koan deeper.  If I get it – which I don’t claim I do – there is a moment when the koan and life itself mesh.  The koan is a way of noticing life itself as it is unfolding.  So, it’s not “say Mu now”  “say Mu NOW” ad nauseam.  It’s a felt realization of Mu in this breath, this movement, this thought.  (OK, words are inadequate so you’ll have to deliver this baby on your own.)

Anyway, I put together this little video that says it better.  Are these lights red or blue?  Speak and I’ll send you my copy of Deepak’s book, Buddha.  Don’t speak and you get the graphic novel version!