Eighteen Zen Koans from the Western Tradition

I’m a life long student of the koan way. It has given me the contours of the formal part of my interior life. And, I remain endlessly grateful.

I’m also interested in how we might find koans outside of the formal canon, the received cases enshrined in the great anthologies and within the various schools of koan introspection.

So, I was pleased when a friend pointed me to a draft copy of a koan curriculum for Western students compiled in 1990 by the late Eido Tai Shimano.

Shimano Roshi is at the very least a controversial figure. He was a very important figure in the establishment of Zen in the West. And throughout his teaching career there were rumors of sexual misconduct. In the final years before his death this erupted into the public sphere. He was charged with targeting vulnerable women and taking advantage of his position as a prominent spiritual leader to seduce them. Seduce feels the mildest of possible terms for his misconduct. There are other words that perhaps are more appropriate. The upshot was that Shimano was removed from leadership in the sangha he led and only a few years later he died disgraced.

And, he was a creative and successful guide along the koan way. I know and deeply respect several of his dharma successors. There’s that, as well.

For me a very important lesson in this is that koan introspection is not everything. It genuinely helps us to see into the fundamental matter of our wild openness as well as the preciousness of everything thing as it arises and falls within that openness. Or, perhaps more correctly everything as that openness. The dynamic mystery constantly unfolding. I can testify to this out of my own life. But, a complete spiritual life requires other things, as well. Truthfully, I can testify to this out of my own life, as well.

All that said, there’s this wonderful collection in draft form. And it included a number of koans derived from the Western traditions. In his draft document Eido Roshi mixed these in with what in many traditions are called “Miscellaneous Koans.” These are in-house collections used in specific lineages and follow the breakthrough koan, in our Japanese derived traditions flowing from the great Eighteenth century Hakuin Ekaku, that breakthrough koan is almost always Mu. They’re usually short and give us the sense of how to engage koans, the language of koans if you will. Or, as I suggested in my study of koans, the grammar, or language of dragons.

What follows are eighteen cases from Western sources Shimano dropped into that Miscellaneous collection part of his proposed curriculum. He presented a bunch of these in a row, then began to intersperse them with more traditional koans. Upon a first read there appear to be some errors in biblical attributions. But, for the moment I’m simply presenting them as the occur in the anthology, separated out from the Chinese and Japanese cases.

Eighteen Western Koans from the
Dai Bosatsu Roku

1. Little flower–but if I c~~ld understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. Who is he?