Zen Koans

by Tuffley, David

• ISBN13: 9781453866931
• ISBN10: 1453866930
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-16
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Summary

The wisdom of the ancient Zen masters and sages expressed in modern day language for all to understand. The koan is an enigmatic or paradoxical question used to develop a person's Intuition. Koans are a valuable tool in your quest for enlightenment, but how do they work and why use them? Koans work by confounding logic and forcing a person out of their normal thinking and into the realm of Intuition. In other words, the inherent meaning is inaccessible to rational understanding, but perhaps accessible to Intuition.This book presents some of the classic koans from traditional Zen, originally written hundreds of years ago in Japanese, and re-interpreted from early English translations into early 21st Century English. The underlying meaning is still there, so they will still work as a koan should, but they are expressed in language more easily understood by people in the 21st Century. Each koan encapsulates a profound truth for reflection. Zen counsels the lessening of the ego, not the strengthening of it as consumer culture would urge. Instead of making a name for ourselves in society, we should listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs, in other words become no-thing, entering instead the field of pure being that is behind the phenomenal world.