Date: 10/18/2025 10/19/2025
Location: Star Lake Meditation Center
Teacher: Shilin Long
Sitting Meditation
Koan Zen: Seeing the Truth Through Questions
Koan Zen is one of the most distinctive methods in Zen Buddhism. A koan is not a puzzle, not a riddle, and not something to be solved intellectually. It is a question that intentionally defies logic, pushing the practitioner to abandon conceptual thinking and directly perceive the true nature of mind. A koan does not provide answers—it reveals the truth.
1. What Is a Koan? A Question Beyond Logic
1. Not a logical problem
It cannot be solved through reasoning.
2. Not a philosophical inquiry
Its aim is insight, not intellectual understanding.
3. A tool to cut through attachment
The question itself breaks conceptual fixation.
2. Why Zen Uses Koans: To Shift From Thinking to Awareness
1. To break habitual thought
The mind habitually analyzes and judges.
2. To interrupt conceptual creation
A koan forces the mind beyond language.
3. To bring awareness into the present
When thinking collapses, awareness appears.
3. How a Koan Works: Bringing Thought to Its Limit
1. The koan leads thinking into a dead end
The mind has “nowhere to go.”
2. When thought stops, true awareness emerges
This is the koan’s true function.
3. The koan is to be “seen,” not “solved”
It points to mind beyond thought.
4. The Four Functions of a Koan: Breaking, Revealing, Shifting, Awakening
1. Breaking attachment
Such as “Your original face before your parents were born.”
2. Revealing habitual reactions
Like “The cypress tree in the courtyard.”
3. Shifting the mind out of duality
Beyond right/wrong, gain/loss, birth/death.
4. Awakening insight
A koan is an entrance to awakening.
5. How to Work With a Koan: Total Presence, Not Thought
1. Do not explain
Any verbal answer misses the point.
2. Do not analyze
Analysis pulls the mind back into duality.
3. Look directly
Observe the koan as it arises in awareness.
6. Common Misunderstandings About Koans
1. Trying to find the “correct answer”
There is no conceptual answer.
2. Believing koans involve mystical powers
They point to ordinary mind, not magic.
3. Expecting quick enlightenment
The koan reveals the mind, but insight unfolds naturally.
7. The True Purpose of Koan Zen: Returning to the True Mind
1. Breaking out of conceptual imprisonment
Seeing beyond ego structures.
2. Discovering how the mind builds and dissolves illusions
A direct study of one’s own consciousness.
3. Recognizing inherent clarity
Awareness is not created—it is revealed.
Conclusion
The essence of koan Zen is to use an unanswerable question as a mirror to reflect the mind itself.
A koan is not a puzzle but a gateway; not a riddle but a path to awakening.
Through a koan, the practitioner steps beyond conceptual thinking and encounters the true mind—clear, free, and ever-present.
