I think your answers were pretty good and your experience with Zen Koan’s seems to be on point. You arrive where you start 🙂

Koan’s…  one master answers yes the other no and both are correct and wrong… has lead to made many a Student suffering. Perhaps that is the point or intent as it is the tension between seeming opposites that leads to consciousness as Koan’s push/pull a student to transcend duality/thought… begging the question if one transcends duality is one still conscious??? Yes… No… Mu 🙂

I read a story about a student that asked a master ‘What is Zen’ the Master throws a stone at the student, and the student spontaneously ducks and and awakens.

LOL I forgot my point…. their is a reason the buddha is always laughing

 I have smacked myself many times but I only get dizzy.

🙂 that sounds like Zen to me. Begs the question what is enlightenment and how we would notice when a moment of enlightenment was achieved?

My observation is that its kind of like happiness the moment one thinks… ah their it is I have it… it disappears.  Enlightenment like trying to grasp and hold on to air with ones hands. The problematic word in that sentence being ‘grasp’ as it tends to be attached to the word ‘I’. In Zen thier is no I so no-thing to do the grasping.

When I picture the stone being thrown at the student (or slap) in that moment thier is the stone and body labeled student. The body spontaneously ducks. No thoughts like… Why did master throw the stone, The stone is a illusion, the body is a illusion, what does this mean, why, why me, not fair, vengeance, anger, fear… If such thoughts did arise the student is going to get hit and its going to hurt.

The body/mind/spirit, labeled student, “knows” this and engaging fully in the moment as it is  moves. The rock flies past. A moment of enlightenment. A moment not measurement in time or space and so infinite -“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities” 🙂 (The Body and rock are not illusions the  ‘student’ is)

In Zen a act of Free Will is the act of letting Will go, (In my opinion the only act of free will possible) , Doing by not doing. A state of being where one is fully Engaged in Life as it is and at the same moment fully Detached.  I’m reminded of those infomercials selling the some slow cooker or something. ‘Set it and Forget it.

My experience of Zen is that it seems to be a practice intended to ‘break’ the mind. Break the habitual thinking, thoughts, memory’s that we believe/feel is a I. One returns from where one started and ‘sees’ it for the first time (the mountain becomes a mountain)  We work for that which no work is required (doing by not doing) “You” are/were always buddha

Thanks for humoring me letting me play 🙂

Dear Tom:

You are welcome and thank you for posting- whenever you feel like posting, please do!

Gelotology is the study of the physiological effects of laughter on our bodies, so I learned today. In summary, laughter leads to relaxation, to a better immune system functioning and to other physical benefits; all- without unpleasant side effects  (except for the one Peter mentioned, ha… ha).

anita

Dear Tommy/ Reader:

I wanted to understand what koans are about, so I looked at patehos. com and The mind’s journal. com:

Koans are phrases or small stories that are not meant to be addressed by the rational, thinking mind. They’re actually designed to put the thinking part of our brain (“the beast that never sleeps”) on pause, in an attempt to activate our Beginner’s Mind. A Beginner’s Mind is an awakened (if only for a moment) state of mind where we experience things as if for the first time.

In this awakened state (if only for a moment), there is no pushing, no seeking. no thinking-mind-generated noise, no asking questions and no finding answers (A famous Zen saying is: “In Zen we don’t find the answers. We lose the questions”). Koans are a way to slip past  the-beast-that-never-sleeps. They allow finding truth without triggering rigid thinking and judgements.

Koans challenge and transform conventional thinking. Zen Buddhists use Koans during meditation to exhaust the egoic and analytic mind and uncover the intuitive No-Mind. They are about unraveling the greater truths about ourselves and the world. Zen Koans are a tool that delves into the mind of a meditator to challenge and break rigid thinking. “Koans are not meant to provide any explanations or answers. They simply show you the way”.

Examples of koans: “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear“, “No thoughts. No action. No movement. Total stillness”, “Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand“, “The harder you try the less you know”, “Do not seek what you already have“,  “You are there now. What was never lost can never be found”, “Where am I? Here. What time is it? Now“, “The way is an empty vessel that is never filled”.

anita