Western Zen is usually either Japanese Soto type Zen (Dogen's Zen) or some form of it which mainly involves the practice of ritual sitting. For the most part, it really doesn't have an adequate koan tradition. This could be because the majority of Western teachers don't understand koans enough to be confident with them having inherited Japanese Zen. The Japanese koan system, itself, does not appear to have grasped the Chinese koan or kung-an (公案) in the same way the Koreans and Vietnamese have. We need to keep in mind that koans are the brainchild of Chinese Zennists; the most notable document being the Blue Cliff Records (Pi-Yen-Lu) which is a collection of a hundred cases. Incidentally, the Blue Cliff Records reveal how koans work by means of the hua-t'ou (here R.D.M. Shaw translates it with Pre-Voice).
“The real substance of the Universe, the ‘First Principle,’ that which is behind or beyond the Voice [hua] or expression of ultimate Truth, this ‘Pre-Voice’ is transmitted only from heart [mind] to heart [mind], and no matter how great or holy or advanced in Enlightenment a man may be he cannot transmit it by means of words and phrases. This Pre-Voice is not far away, it is indeed quite close to us, but unless one has had intimate, immediate contact with it—has had audience of it as one who has audience of the Emperor—this very near-at-hand Truth will be as far off and separated from us as by thousands of worlds” (brackets are mine).
From the above we can gather that koans are a means of realizing pure Mind which is the Mind to Mind Zen transmission. The koan’s semantic structure, which is certainly well crafted, is set up for the realization of pure Mind; acting to judge anyone who might try to find Mind in the koan. It is good to keep in mind that koans are not little stories intended to help us get through the day. They are quite esoteric in nature.
Whatever the Zen master is doing in the koan is always pointing to pure Mind regardless of how strange his pointing may seem to those unacquainted with pure Mind. In other words, he is trying to awaken his students to something quite profound which is right in front of their nose.
Because Western Zen seems to ignore pure Mind, hardly ever mentioning its importance, it is not surprising that their handling of koans, in my opinion, is inept and, to a certain degree, counterproductive.
perso.ens-lyon.fr/eric.boix/Koan/Hekiganroku/Hekigan-Eg.pdf
Posted by: Bob Morris | January 30, 2012 at 08:11 PM
Pathfinder, there is another Zennist blog on this subject at http://goo.gl/1AhO8.
Posted by: kojizen | January 30, 2012 at 03:31 PM
(R.D.M. Shaw's "Pre-Voice", a very peculiar translation, although very beautiful and perhaps even more meaningful than the standard translations, such as "critical phrase". But from a merely linguistic aspect, hua t'ou means exactly "word head".)
Posted by: Pathfinder | January 30, 2012 at 01:46 PM