Attribution

Important note: All the posts on this blog were written by Bob Harwood (AKA 'zendancer') on the forum spiritualteachers.proboards.com. I have merely reposted a collection of them in blog format for the convenience of seekers. Some very small mods were made on occasion to make posts readable outside of the forum setting they were made in.

Cigarette man koan

In the cigarette-man koan the cigarette man will not listen to anything you say. No matter what you do, he will hit you. He is very strong, and he is very attached to his ideas. This koan attacks a fundamental assumption about the role of being a teacher and potential efforts to enlighten people who have closed minds.

How can you teach someone who is totally attached to his/her thinking? How can you teach the cigarette man?