I had to post the text EC-lol. You are priceless-lo.
Using Koans to develop insight
This thread started with a Koan and developed into a discussion on the use of koans to provoke or develop insight.
How heavy is the world?
(:
Nick
www.human-alchemy.com
Monks seeking to study Zen would often be given a koan to take away and ponder on for a period of time and subsequenrly be given a single opportunity after considerable reflection to intuitively grasp the answer to the koan. Intellectual answers would be quickly dismissed and the monk would be sent packing to reflect further. Each koan DOES have an answer and typically each "universal insight" comes as an intuition. As with many books on Zen and other traditions, some people over analyse and over intellectualise losing the ability to discover deeper insights, something which interestingly also happens in other fields of personal development such as NLP, where individuals chunk smaller and smaller and become more and more polarised into fixed views...
Mmmmmmm.....
(:
Nick
Hi,
My Zen teacher gave me a koan 3 years ago.
I am still working it.
MaryA
Respect to someone who has the dedication to practice of Zen rather than the usually glib intellectual responses that come from the overly intellectual types! (and they know who they are..)
BTW What sort of things have you noticed from working with a koan?
(:
Nick Kemp
> BTW What sort of things have you noticed from working with a koan?
Madness. Absolute screaming frustration. Akin to attempting to swallow a red hot iron ball, that won't go up and won't go down. That eventually, as one delves deeper into it, every single second, seems consumed with resolving the koan. And the next day. And the next day. Even when asleep, the puzzle is there, like the edge of a nightmare. Knowing that whatever I come up with as an answer, isn't going to be it.
And then.. the delicious euphoric moment.. satori.. attainment.. enlightenment.. and oh the desire to hold on to that state.. and of course, in so doing.. it is gone. Years for a moment. Yet what a moment.
When I saw the koan presented here, my mind ran screaming from the building. No, no, not another one. :)
LOL.
MaryA
:-)
I have been struggling with this one. Many answers spring to mind, but I don't get the impression that the aim is to throw random responses at you till I get one right, and none have created a sense of rightness that I would expect the answer to give. The intellect sort of slides off the question.
Adam (who reads the last page of a whodunit before the book)
With a koan, the answer is not what is important. What matters is the set of changes that one makes while seeking the answer. The intellect sort of slides off more than just the question.
The point is to break the bonds of dependency of the mind on linear thought and language. Koans work, but damn, they are slow. For a philosophy that purports to take the short and direct road, Zen sure does like to take things the hard way.
A good NLP practitioner training can start someone on the same path in a few days' time, using language and thought that is non-linear.
--
Michael DeBusk
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