Most riddles are trivial, such as the father/son riddle, but when we ask an existential question, such as "Who am I?", that is also a riddle. The difference is that the father/son riddle can be seen-through with an hour or two of contemplation. The "who am I?" riddle often requires years of contemplation because the conditioning is so much stronger.
All koans have concrete answers that can be discovered through contemplation. A large number of people have cosmic consciousness experiences simply by focusing on the "Mu" koan. During those experiences, which Zen calls "kensho experiences" (seeing into one's true nature), one or more realizations may simultaneously occur. After seeing through the mu koan, one realizes, without any doubt, that the ordinary world as cognitively perceived by most adults is not the real world. After seeing through the koan, one can easily answer the question "What is mu?"
Folks who are not familiar with koans and how they work may not realize how easy it is for teachers to evaluate the clarity of a student's mind by simply asking a few questions. If, for example, a Zen Master points to a tree, and asks a student, "What is that?" she can judge the student's understanding by the kind of response she gets. If the student responds, "That's a tree," that's a far shallower response than "I don't know" or "That's mu." By asking several such questions a Zen Master can roughly ascertain what someone understands, and how far they have progressed.
Koans, for people who are familiar with them, can be incredibly fun, and most of the old recorded dialogues of Layman P'ang and other Chan masters are non-stop koan battles in which quick-wittedness is highly admired. It is like verbal fencing in the void. After he lost one exchange, P'ang walked away and said to a bystander, "D**M, blew it by trying to be too clever." Most of the time he held his own and often won.
Zen Masters are always playing in this manner. One day Rinzai was walking by two soldiers on his way into a building. He pointed to a horse hitching post and asked the men, "Is that sacred or profane?" Neither man could say a word, much less answer correctly, so Rinzai laughed and replied, "Whatever you say it is just a post." If he had asked another Zen Master the same question, the repartee would have been far more exciting and probably memorable. During a formal dinner in Rinzai's honor, Rinzai asked Fu'kei, a bizarre character who lived at the same time, a koan. Fu'kei suddenly upended the dinner table and walked off. Rinzai reportedly said to the assembled people, "Yeah, he's enlightened, but he's still a crude unmannered fellow." LOL
All koans have concrete answers that can be discovered through contemplation. A large number of people have cosmic consciousness experiences simply by focusing on the "Mu" koan. During those experiences, which Zen calls "kensho experiences" (seeing into one's true nature), one or more realizations may simultaneously occur. After seeing through the mu koan, one realizes, without any doubt, that the ordinary world as cognitively perceived by most adults is not the real world. After seeing through the koan, one can easily answer the question "What is mu?"
Folks who are not familiar with koans and how they work may not realize how easy it is for teachers to evaluate the clarity of a student's mind by simply asking a few questions. If, for example, a Zen Master points to a tree, and asks a student, "What is that?" she can judge the student's understanding by the kind of response she gets. If the student responds, "That's a tree," that's a far shallower response than "I don't know" or "That's mu." By asking several such questions a Zen Master can roughly ascertain what someone understands, and how far they have progressed.
Koans, for people who are familiar with them, can be incredibly fun, and most of the old recorded dialogues of Layman P'ang and other Chan masters are non-stop koan battles in which quick-wittedness is highly admired. It is like verbal fencing in the void. After he lost one exchange, P'ang walked away and said to a bystander, "D**M, blew it by trying to be too clever." Most of the time he held his own and often won.
Zen Masters are always playing in this manner. One day Rinzai was walking by two soldiers on his way into a building. He pointed to a horse hitching post and asked the men, "Is that sacred or profane?" Neither man could say a word, much less answer correctly, so Rinzai laughed and replied, "Whatever you say it is just a post." If he had asked another Zen Master the same question, the repartee would have been far more exciting and probably memorable. During a formal dinner in Rinzai's honor, Rinzai asked Fu'kei, a bizarre character who lived at the same time, a koan. Fu'kei suddenly upended the dinner table and walked off. Rinzai reportedly said to the assembled people, "Yeah, he's enlightened, but he's still a crude unmannered fellow." LOL
