Anyway, early on in the book while reflecting on the origins of koans, Heine writes, \u201cFurthermore, there is a medieval genre of detective story literature based on tales of intricate, suspenseful legal investigations that is also known by the term \u2018kung-an.\u2019 Most people in modern China who are aware of the term recognize it as referring to this literary genre, and the significance of kung-an\/koan for Zen is less well known.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was quite taken with this, particularly as a fan of the mystery genre. While it is true that koans emerge within medieval China inspired by numerous sources, it\u2019s unlikely the mystery genre was a major current. Still, tantalizingly, the term koan (gongan or kung-an depending on one\u2019s preferred transliteration of the Chinese) is the same word used for Chinese medieval mysteries. But they probably both derive from the fact the term is a term of law; a koan is a \u201cpublic case\u201d as in a court case.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, it was tantalizing. And so I sent a note off to various friends asking what they knew about this. Michael Gold came up with some lovely links about those traditional mystery stories. A Dutch diplomat by the name of Robert Van Gulik<\/a> took an interest in the subject and translated one of the stories, the Dee Goong An (still in print as The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee<\/a> based upon an historical Judge Dee<\/a>. Van Gulik then went on to write a number of his own, most still in print from the University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n I was reading Steven Heine\u2019s Opening A Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters. I really like him. He is a first rate scholar who at the same time loves koan literature and appears to be profoundly disinterested in koans as they are used within formal Zen training. What I really like is how this allows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-116058577212019085?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\")