GENIUS FORUMS

In my view, the answer to all Zen koans is "mu," "buns," "katz," "three pounds of flax," or silence. When one understands why these seemingly meaningless answers are equivalent to or better than any conventionally meaningful ones, one understands the essence of Zen.

The paradox here, of course, is that the rational intellect must be employed to understand the limitations of the rational intellect. There is a path to pathlessness, and work to be done in order to realize there is no work to be done. Mystery follows knowledge.

Mu!

Unidian wrote:In my view, the answer to all Zen koans is "mu," "buns," "katz," "three pounds of flax," or silence. When one understands why these seemingly meaningless answers are equivalent to or better than any conventionally meaningful ones, one understands the essence of Zen.

A Zen koan has very specific answers. From the trillions of ways to answer only a very few demonstrate understanding. Which ones, the context will decide, the people involved and their level of understanding, what was said and done before and thousands of other factors. For an outsider it must seem random but I've never seen any reply to a Koan by a wise person in literature or life that wasn't sharp and to the point, as if it couldn't have been said otherwise. A rather precise practice, all in all.

The paradox here, of course, is that the rational intellect must be employed to understand the limitations of the rational intellect. There is a path to pathlessness, and work to be done in order to realize there is no work to be done. Mystery follows knowledge.

To talk about anything leading to pathlessness is delusional:

As long as there's distance, the right paths remain crucial to keep walking on if one doesn't want to get lost. When distance would become zero, the very concept of a path doesn't apply.

But walking a path doesn't decrease or dissolve the distance. You'll never walk without a path as long as you live, since your life is that very path.