![\"\"](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SGeE-rMy2pI\/AAAAAAAABEA\/pffALQhLX3w\/s1600-h\/templebell.jpg\")
<\/a>Koans as the Sounds of Silence<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
Stop that distant temple bell.<\/p>\n
A traditional Zen koan<\/p>\n
Yesterday when I opened my digest of entries to the minister\u2019s listserve to which I subscribe one writer alluded to how the relationship between spiritual and religious might be a koan.<\/p>\n
My immediate reaction was no and yes, sort of.<\/p>\n
No, because when people use that word they usually mean it in the sense of a paradox or, increasingly, a thorny question. And frankly, that was how the word appeared to be used at the listserve.<\/p>\n
Now the writer was simply using the definition that has been put upon it in its short history as an English language word. But this is not its use within the spiritual discipline that coined the term. Koan<\/a> is the Japanese pronunciation of the word gongan, which literally means \u201cpublic case,\u201d as in a court document. In its technical use as a discipline within Zen Buddhism<\/a>, a koan is an anecdote, a short phrase, occasionally a fragment of a poem or a fairy tale, sometimes nothing more than a word; and is always used as an expression of the relative and the absolute, the harmony of boundless emptiness and the phenomenal world. Or, perhaps more simply a koan is a theme or point in Zen to be made clear.<\/p>\n Koans are not thorny questions. Koans are not riddles or questions with no answer. They are not meant to startle people into some sort of \u201ctransrational\u201d state. They are an assertion about reality and an invitation to one\u2019s most intimate encounter.<\/p>\n Sadly, the \u201cthorny question\u201d use is increasingly common, in fact it is the most common use for the word in common North American usage. For instance I\u2019ve even heard Buddhist<\/a> teachers use it and, for me, more startlingly, even Zen teachers who do not practice within a koan tradition, use it in the sense of \u201cI\u2019ve been offered a job in Albuquerque, but it means leaving my family and friends. It\u2019s a real koan\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n So, in that sense, no, the question of the relationship of a private spirituality and a public religious is not a koan.<\/p>\n And, at the same time, there is a hint of something \u201ckoanic,\u201d in the question. The squaring of the circle, the reconciliation of apparent contradictions are exercises that have something of the spirit of the koan about them. Although the emphasis would have to be on \u201capparent,\u201d as no true koan is ever about contradiction. the contradiction it shatters is a deep one to the human heart, but a false one, the source of much hurt in the world.<\/p>\n So, here\u2019s the yes, sort of about the koan of spiritual and religious. There are deep ways in which we have no private experience without a public one, or vice versa. Here something like a koan might be found. Sort of\u2026<\/p>\n But, as long as I\u2019m ranting on the use of the word koan, I\u2019d rather draw your attention to a real koan, one that more unambiguously takes us to the deepest points of the spiritual quest.<\/p>\n