The koan is a little nugget of something an awakened master did during his time. ~ Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman, Sanbo Zen Teacher and long time koan student, answers the question: What is a koan? in the short-video clip (scroll below) from the full length feature film on a conversation between Henry Shukman and Chris Hebard about Zen and more.
One Bright Pearl full length video will be available for purchase (as a digital downloadable video) through our Amazon marketplace – very soon. Also, time-to-time we offer it as an incentive to sign up for our newsletters … so circle back and check our FREE OFFER page.
The word koan actually means “a public case” which has a legal background, like an established legal precedent. The world transferred over to the spiritual realm of Zen. Henry describes…
A koan contains awakening. They are mostly tiny little stories of things that great awakened masters said or did…the koan is a little nugget of something an awakened master did during his time, which still contains the world as he experienced it.
Henry explains that koans are from the Chinese Tang dynasty which is when Zen began to flourish, between 600-900 AD. Zen was a confluence of Buddhism and Taoism, which Henry believes contains the best of both traditions.
We sit with koans during our Zen practice.
We take them into our meditation.
Henry calls the koan a riddle, a puzzle, or an enigma, until it does its work and brings us to some taste, some personal lived glimpse of the world of the original master.
Again, One Bright Pearl full length video will be available for purchase (as a digital downloadable video) through our Amazon marketplace – very soon. Also, time-to-time we offer it as an incentive to sign up for our newsletters … so circle back and check our FREE OFFER page.
This clip and the upcoming film is a Stillness Speaks production in association with Mountain Cloud Zen Center. It is produced by Chris Hebard and Henry Shukman. Filmographer (including video editing) is Jonathan Mugford (who can be contacted @ jonathan.mugford@gmail.com). All text and quotes in this post are from this film.
Video clip copyright holder is Stillness Speaks & Pruett Media, and it is freely made available to Mountain Cloud Zen Center.
Image (edited with logo): Featured and 1) Search for my original face 2) Om mani padme hum, both images by Jim O’Neil, CC by 2.0 from Flickr.com
Thank you for sharing this K.O.A.N. moment with the world of seekers.
For me, I have personally chosen to use that word as an acronym standing for:
K – Knowing
O – Omni’s
A – Awakened
N – Noetics
Lawrence,
Thanks for taking the time to share your acronym … 🙂
Sanjiv