From the moment language blinked into existence, humans have tried to hold onto the words that accompany our mysterious moments of insight. We’ve etched them on bones, written them on papyrus scrolls, attached them to the refrigerator with a magnet.
A bit more than a millennium ago, people in China started to call these words koans. They were sayings, records of conversations, bits of verse, and stories. It appears that koans came out of a very old tradition of improvised, spoken word poetry, art that crystallized out of a particular moment of insight.
“Koans will show you something, and it will never be how you or the world is wrong.”
Soon there were great collections of koans, and people discovered that meditating on them was a transformative practice. Koans came to be a way of communicating understandings about the nature of reality.
When I first heard about koans, I imagined them as obscure spiritual puzzles for argumentative monks. That didn’t seem very appealing. But then I met an actual koan, and it was good company. I turned it over and over in my meditation. I let myself inside the world of the koan, and slowly, unexpectedly, it started softening me up. I became fond of my life, even the difficult bits — the grumpy children, the impossible problems.
The French poet Paul Eluard explained it this way: “There is another world, but it’s inside this one.” Koans gave my practice a new kind of energy. I found there was something in me that understood what they were talking about. Ever since, I’ve always had a koan with me.
A koan is made of evocative words and images. It’s not generalized spiritual advice, or even a good idea; it’s a response to a specific moment, and that moment is happening now. Each koan is different and takes us on its own journey. Take this koan that I’ve worked with:
Step by step in the dark, if my foot is not wet, I’ve found the stone.
I can enter the koan through the stone, the dark, or the water. And when I do, it’s possible to see how this moment is like so many others: “I’m in the dark again, looking for a stone. I’m walking, taking one step after another.” I can see that difficult situations are part of the condition of being human. We find ourselves in the dark because it’s in our nature to, and yet it’s also in our nature to find our way. The eternal and the ephemeral are connected.
Koans will show you something, and it will never be how you or the world is wrong. Your criticisms and judgments, your plans for escape, for revenge or redemption — none of that matters to the koan. It will show you the vast web of everything, the net of jewels you’re a part of. Koans are a gate into the never-boring world of everything you don’t already know. Here’s a way to enter.
Take a Step
Find a koan for yourself. You can use the one about stepping in the dark, or if that holds no appeal, find another at the end of this article. Perhaps you’ve already found a koan, or one is eyeing you from across the room.
You can meditate with the koan or take it for a walk. You can repeat the words to yourself, or not. Even one word is enough.
What you remember consciously may not be up to you. Trusting the way you naturally work with the koan is the beginning of making a relationship with it.
The koan, “Step by step in the dark…” points to the way you have the capacity to find a moment of ease, a dry place to put your foot. Notice when that ease comes, maybe that’s the stone. This koan also provides you with places to step in the form of potent words and images.
Actually walk in the dark and notice how it is for you. Find out what kind of stone is your stone, and how it is for you to step there. Notice when you’re at peace.
Be in the Dark
We like to know things. It makes us feel safer, not vulnerable to criticism from ourselves or others. Koans don’t work like that. They reward the vulnerability of not knowing. Let go of the ways you usually use your mind— the plans and the judgments. If you like, you can even let go of the koan. Once you’ve heard it, you can’t lose it. It will stay with you, anchored below your attention.
You don’t need to explain it to yourself or figure it out. Allow yourself to go to the edge of what you know and look beyond. This curiously delicious darkness stretches out in all directions. Transformation comes from this place.
Get Wet
Take the koan into your life. Take it to the store, on long commutes, to work, to the woods, to the circus, on holidays with your parents or children. Allow it into your heart when you’re late for an appointment or in the midst of a hard conversation, and when you’re sad or bored or disappointed in fame or fortune.
Remember the koan again and notice what happens. Really look. What you saw before won’t be what you see now. You may see the light in people’s faces that you’d previously missed. Something annoying may turn out to be funny instead.
Find a Stone
When you lose your practice, when suffering appears again, impenetrable and literal, you can always start again. Find your koan, shake it a bit, and ask, what now?
You can practice with a koan anytime, in any condition. You can take it into sitting meditation, where it will quietly subvert your mind’s standard ploys. And you can also take it where you don’t think it can go. It’s there whenever you need insight or a hand to hold in the dark. There won’t be an answer, not directly, but the world will be visible in a different way. Perhaps it will bring tears to your eyes, or make you laugh out loud.
A Sampling of Traditional Koans
- There is a true person of no rank always coming and going through the portals of your face.
- There is nothing I dislike.
- The heart-mind turns in accord with the ten thousand things. The pivot on which it turns is very deep.
- Put out the fire across the river.
- Without judging good or bad, what is your original face before your parents were born?
- Heart clouded, heart unclouded, standing or falling, it’s still the same body.
- Who am I?
- There is a solitary brightness without fixed shape or form. It knows how to listen, to understand, and to teach the dharma. This solitary brightness is you.
- Question: Why did the first ancestor come from the West? Answer: The oak tree in the garden.