Koan Work
The Question of Life and Death
In our Zen tradition, sitting (shikantaza) is also combined with koan work, the questioning and searching of the heart-mind. Through searching and questioning, the heart-mind is opened, and through this opening, the whole world can enter.
More than the search for well-being, the ultimate questions are those of the heart-mind: What is the meaning of my life? Where do I go after death? What is real? Who am I? How can my heart find peace? Why evil?
It is not so much you who asks the questions; it is life that questions you. Listening and articulating are the foundation of spiritual life.
And your questions, which stir and are contained within your heart, can become focused attention and energize your zazen and the spiritual path. This can only happen in dialogue with other people and the world. Answers from books, authorities, scriptures—all these are just fingers pointing to the moon, not the moon itself; they cannot truly fill your heart and mind.
The search and longing of the heart-mind can only be fulfilled by surrendering to unfathomable abysses and the incomprehensible unknown, where questions fall silent. It is the silence of fullness. The self has disappeared into the mystery that is grace. This must be realized in human relationships and in the world,
it must be recognized and affirmed in the in-between of human relationships and in the reality of the world.
"Let your mind come forth, while you abide nowhere."
Koan History
Zen koans were originally such life questions. Such questions and the search are fundamental to any authentic spiritual path, but Zen refined them into a great art. Everything became such a language, not just words. Paradoxical, illogical, and strange uses of such language became the hallmark of Zen. Everything arose from the realization that words cannot grasp reality, that the unspeakable and inexpressible can only be represented, that the most pressing question was how to know reality here and now, to achieve liberation and self-transformation.
Approaches to Koan Practice
A monk asked a Zen master: "What did the original face look like before my birth?"
The Zen master replied: "Look at it!"
The monk looked around but saw nothing.
The Zen master said: "That's it."
"The original face" – the face before you were brought into the world by your mother and father. What is it?"
"Your original face/self" is a well-known koan. It is case number 23 in the Mumonkan koan collection. It asks you the fundamental question:
Who are you truly and ultimately?
Are you just a thing of the world that comes today and disappears tomorrow? Are you just your history, your social status, and your physical form, or are you more than these? Or are you just your relationships, loves, and friendships? Who are you before the world, before others, and to yourself?
This koan points to the idea that the original face before birth is not something external or tangible. It is the essence of our being, our true nature, which is always present and unchanging. It is not something we can find outside of ourselves; it is within us, waiting to be recognized. The koan challenges you to recognize your formless self, your original face: but the formless self is nothing other than the form of this self here and now. The recognition of emptiness is central to awakening—it is awakening to the recognition of the incomprehensibility and mystery of oneself as well as all of reality; but primarily of oneself as empty; and as one with the entire world. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.(Ama Samy)