For Zennists who read and study koans (公案) the most obvious feature of a koan is that it cuts off what the intellect (manas) wants to do which is to unravel their seeming complexity. But this is not all.
Also koans allude to something transcendent which calls for an intuitive approach. The transcendent is called in Chinese the huatou (話頭) which alludes to the ‘real substance of the universe’ or the ‘first principle’. In short, the huatou is pure Mind before it takes the shape of thought (manas).
Those who insist on using their intellect to solve koans are getting no place. If they have been working on one koan or several for five or ten years their intellect is not helping them. It is an obstruction. Joshu’s “Mu” is like bait for the intellect but also an obstruction called the “barrier of Zen.” But every koan is, in fact, such a barrier. Not only does every koan bait the intellect but the koan’s real goal is to exhaust the intellect—throw it into great doubt, paving the way for an intuitive breakthrough.
From the koan ‘Hyakujõ's Fox’, to koans like ‘Gutei Raises a Finger’, ‘Kyõgen's Man up in a Tree,’and the mysterious, ‘The Buddha Holds Out a Flower’ koans are bait designed to trap and destroy the intellectual approach to answering the koan.
Having said that, I think Nietzsche would agree that a koan is a bait which man’s intellect cannot resist swallowing! And for over a thousand years many have swallowed this bait to no avail only to be caught, cooked, and served on the plate of samsara.
Even those who warn the students of Zen that the intellect will not solve a single koan are either ignored or scoffed at. But all this just serves to focus on the problem of our attachment to approaching Zen through the intellect rather than by intuition.
Our problem is not unlike Alexander the Great’s frustration, who was challenged to solve the puzzle of the Gordian knot which bound a wagon's yoke to a pole with a large complex knot of vine twig without visible ends. Almost at once, seeing the knot was virtually impossible for him to untie Alexander, perhaps by a spark of intuition, slashed the knot in two with his sword.
One of my favorite koans takes place when the monks assembled before the midday meal to listen to a lecture by Hõgen of Seiryõ. He pointed at some bamboo blinds. Two monks got up and rolled up the blinds. Hõgen said, "One gain, one loss.”
Yes, this is great bait. Try to resist it. You can’t. Explain it using your intellect. You still have some doubt.
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