Koan
A is a story, dialogue, question, or statement from Chinese Chan Buddhist lore, supplemented with commentaries, that is used in Chan, Zen, Seon and Thiền Buddhist practice in different ways. The main goal of practice in Zen is to achieve , to see or observe one's buddha-nature.
Extended study of literature as well as meditation on a is a major feature of modern Rinzai Zen. They are also studied in the Sōtō school of Zen to a lesser extent. In Chinese Chan and Korean Seon Buddhism, meditating on a, a key phrase of a, is also a major Zen meditation method.
Etymology
The Japanese word is the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word gōng'àn 公案. According to the Yuan dynasty Zen master Zhongfeng Mingben, originated as an abbreviation of , which referred to a "public record" or the "case records of a public law court" in Tang dynasty China. / thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private or subjective opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle.Commentaries in collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. An article by T. Griffith Foulk claims:
was itself originally a metonym—an article of furniture involved in setting legal precedents came to stand for such precedents. For example, is the original title of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, the famous Chinese detective novel based on a historical Tang dynasty judge. Similarly, Zen collections are public records of the notable sayings and actions of Zen masters and disciples attempting to pass on their teachings.
Doctrinal background
The popular Western understanding sees as referring to an unanswerable question or a meaningless or absurd statement. However, in Zen practice, a is not meaningless, and not a riddle or a puzzle. Teachers do expect students to present an appropriate response when asked about a. According to Hori, a central theme of many is the 'identity of opposites':Comparable statements are: "Look at the flower and the flower also looks"; "Guest and host interchange". are also understood as pointers to an unmediated "Pure Consciousness", devoid of cognitive activity. Victor Hori criticizes this understanding:
in China
The "public cases" of the old masters
literature developed at some point in between the late Tang dynasty to the Song dynasty, though the details are unclear. They arose out of the collections of the recorded sayings of Chan masters and "transmission" texts like the Transmission of the Lamp. These sources contained numerous stories of famous past Chan masters which were used to educate Chan/Zen students. According to Morten Schlütter "it is not clear exactly when the practice of commenting on old gongan cases started, but the earliest Chan masters to have such commentaries included in the recorded sayings attributed to them appear to be Yunmen Wenyan and Fenyang Shanzhao."According to Robert Buswell, the tradition "can be viewed as the products of an internal dynamic within Chan that began in the T'ang and climaxed in the Sung." By the beginning of the Song era, Chan masters were known to use these stories in their sermons, as well as to comment on them and to use them to challenge their students.
Schlütter also writes:
Originally, such a story was only considered a when it was commented upon by another Chan master, i.e. when it was used as a "case" study for enlightenment. This practice of commenting on the words and deeds of past masters also served to confirm the master's position as an awakened master in a lineage of awakened masters of the past.
According to Schlütter, these stories were also used "to challenge Chan students to demonstrate their insights: a Chan master would cite a story about a famous master and then demand that his students comment." Later on, certain questions developed independently from the traditional stories and were used in the same fashion. Schlütter also notes that "most commonly used in the Song originally came from the influential Transmission of the Lamp, although the subsequent transmission histories also became sources of."
Over time, a whole literary genre of collection and commentary developed which was influenced by "educated literati" of the Song era. These collections included quotations of encounter-dialogue passages with a master's comment on the case attached. When a prose comment was added, the genre was called , and when poems were used to comment, the genre was termed . Further commentaries would then be written by later figures on these initial comments, leading to quite complex and layered texts.
The style of these Song-era Zen texts was influenced by many Chinese literary conventions and the style of "literary games". Common literary devices included:
There were dangers involved in such a highly literary approach, such as ascribing specific meanings to the cases, or become too involved in book learning. Dahui Zonggao is even said to have burned the woodblocks of the Blue Cliff Record, for the hindrance it had become to the study of Chan by his students.
"Observing the phrase"
During the late Song dynasty, the practice of assigning specific to students for contemplation had become quite common and some sources contain examples of Zen masters who became enlightened through contemplating a.Thus, by the time of Dahui Zonggao, this practice was well established. Dahui promoted and popularized the practice extensively, under the name of "observing the phrase zen". In this practice, students were to observe or concentrate on a single word or phrase, such as the famous of the, and develop a sense of "great doubt" within until this ball of doubt "shattered", leading to enlightenment. Dahui's invention was aimed at balancing the insight developed by reflection on the teachings with developing śamatha, calmness of mind.
This idea of observing a key phrase or word was Dahui's unique contribution, since the earlier method of contemplation never taught the focusing on a single word, nor did it teach to develop a "ball of doubt that builds up before finally shattering." According to Wright, instead of focusing on the full narrative of a, Dahui promoted "intense focus on one critical phrase, generally one word or element at the climax of the."
Dahui also taught that meditation on just one of a single was enough to achieve enlightenment, since penetrating one was penetrating into all of them. He went even further, arguing that this new meditation technique was the only way of achieving enlightenment for Chan practitioners of his day. Thus, Schlütter writes that "in this insistence, he was unusual among the Song Chan masters, who generally tended to take a rather inclusive view of Buddhist practice. It is therefore fair to say that Dahui not only developed a new contemplative technique, he also invented a whole new kind of Chan in the process." Whatever the case, Dahui was extremely influential in shaping the development of the Linji school in the Song.
Dale S. Wright also writes that Dahui:
As Robert Buswell explains, this emphasis on non-conceptual meditation on a meant that "there is nothing that need be developed; all the student must do is simply renounce both the hope that there is something that can be achieved through the practice as well as the conceit that he will achieve that result."
Wright argues that since "the narrative structure of the was eliminated in the focus on a single point", that is the , such a practice became a śamatha-like practice, even if this was never acknowledged by the masters of the Linji school in the Song. Furthermore, Wright also argues that this practice was anti-intellectual since all learning was to be renounced in the practice of. According to Wright, this development left Chinese Chan vulnerable to criticisms by a resurgent neo-Confucianism.
According to Mario Poceski, although Dahui's kanhua Chan purports to be a sudden method, it essentially consists of a process of gradually perfecting concentration. Poceski also observes the role the kanhua technique played in standardizing Chan practice. He argues that this contributed to the routinization of the tradition, resulting in a loss of some of the more open and creative aspects of earlier Chan.
The Chan master's role
According to Kasulis, the rise of contemplation in Song-era Zen led to a greater emphasis on the interaction between master and student, which came to be identified as the essence of enlightenment, since "its verification was always interpersonal. In effect, enlightenment came to be understood not so much as an insight, but as a way of acting in the world with other people."This mutual inquiry of past cases gave Zen students a role model and a sense of belonging to a spiritual family since "one looked at the enlightened activities of one's lineal forebears in order to understand one's own identity." The practice also served to confirm an individual's enlightenment and authority in a specific lineage or school. This formal authorization or confirmation was given by their teacher and was often part of a process of "dharma transmission" in a specific lineage. This formal act placed the "confirmed" Chan master in a special unique position as an interpreter and guide to the.
The importance of the teacher student relationship is seen in modern Japanese training which always requires an authorized teacher in a specific lineage who has the ability to judge a disciple's understanding and expression of a. In the Rinzai Zen school, which uses extensively, the teacher certification process includes an appraisal of proficiency in using that school's extensive curriculum. According to Barbara O'Brien, the practice of going to a private interview with one's Zen master where one has to prove one's understanding of "is the real point of the whole exercise".