Notes on the Forgotten Nature of Zen Koans
Preliminary Remarks
In Western culture, koans have taken the place of spiritual crosswords. Actually, no. Crosswords have to be solved. Our enthusiasts of Eastern teachings, however, merely admire koans. They repeat the words—emptiness, dissolution, shunyata, mu, non-duality, transgression of logic—and perhaps in that moment, they feel profound and enlightened... It’s amusing.
I don’t know how koans were perceived when they sounded like thunder. Perhaps not at all as they are analyzed by modern philosophers. Perhaps koans were not analyzed, but lived. And it is impossible to transmit a lived experience across centuries. It is an individual experience. Well then, perhaps we have lost the essence of koans. Or perhaps we never knew it. In that case, I can very well allow myself to present koans as I see them. Koans are not tools for enlightenment, but ontological formulas, compressed descriptions of the structure of reality. All references to traditional interpretations of koans cited below are taken randomly from search results, because I see no fundamental difference in the sources or their authority.
Consciousness is a process in which it tries to break through its own boundary to find a non-existent 'self,' but the boundary does not disappear, it only shifts. Koans are catalysts for this eternal process.
I. The Flag, the Wind, and the Mind
(Huineng, 8th Century)
Two monks were arguing about a flapping flag. One said, "The flag is moving." The other said, "The wind is moving." The master said, "It is your mind that is moving."
Traditional Explanation: The master cuts short the dispute over "what exactly is moving" and points out: it is the mind that moves, the mind that divides the visible into "flag" and "wind." If this mind is recognized, movement and stillness collapse. The goal is to show the relativity of all phenomena and to return attention to the very act of perception.
The Problem: The master steals distinction from being. The flag and the wind have their own reality, their own distinctions in the structure of being. By reducing everything to the "movement of the mind," the master commits ontological imperialism—he appropriates for consciousness the distinctions that belong to reality itself.
The Deeper Structure: "Being moves in my experience of it." Not "I experience being" (subjectivism) and not "being exists independently" (naive realism), but being experiences itself through me. Movement is a process of circular constitution: being forms consciousness, but it exists only in being experienced. To ignore this double knot is to narrow reality down to psychology.
The Consequence: This is why Buddhism is not active. The denial of the sovereignty of distinctions makes it detached from being. The world belongs to those who respect its differentiated structure.
II. The Dog and the Buddha-Nature
(Zhaozhou, 9th Century)
A monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" Zhaozhou answered, "Mu" (No).
Traditional Explanation: The question "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" confronts the dogma that "all beings have Buddha-nature." The answer "Mu (無)" is not a denial of the doctrine, but a cutting away of the question's logical frame: behind "yes/no" lies a living reality that must be experienced directly. "Mu" serves as an entrance gate: the practitioner must burn through the rational "yes/no" until the distinction itself dissolves.
The Deeper Structure: The monk's question is ill-posed. He asks if the dog possesses Buddha-nature, but in reality, it is the other way around—Buddha-nature possesses the dog. The dog does not contain Buddha-nature; the dog is Buddha-nature in canine form.
The monk's question presupposes that the world can be divided into those who 'possess' and those who 'do not possess' Buddha-nature. Zhaozhou destroys this very boundary.
"Mu" denies not the presence of Buddha-nature, but the structure of possession. Buddha-nature does not "belong" to anyone—it is everything itself. Buddha-nature is Being itself, manifesting in the uniqueness of forms.
III. Nansen's Cat
(Nansen and Zhaozhou, 9th Century)
Two monasteries were arguing over a cat. Nansen laid down a condition: "Say the right word, and I will save the cat. If not, I will kill it." No one answered. Nansen killed the cat. In the evening, Zhaozhou put a sandal on his head. Nansen said, "If you had been here this morning, the cat would have been saved."
Traditional Explanation: The monks cling to "mine/yours"; Nansen cuts the cat to instantly sever their attachment to the object and show the emptiness of division. Zhaozhou places a sandal on his head—a wordless gesture embodying non-attachment, thereby "saving the cat" retroactively. A radical lesson on non-attachment: when the mind holds onto "mine," any "right answer" is already too late.
The Stupidity of the Monks: They were searching for the "right answer" instead of simply saving the cat. They remained silent out of intellectual cowardice, afraid of saying something wrong.
The Stupidity of Nansen: He used power to force enlightenment, making a life dependent on a verbal demonstration of understanding—power over compassion. Spiritual despotism disguised as teaching.
The Action of Zhaozhou: Zhaozhou takes an external position. The monks and Nansen are locked within a system where killing a cat can be a 'lesson'. From inside this system, what is happening seems meaningful.
The sandal on the head is a view from the outside: this is how absurd their entire 'spiritual theater' looks to someone who does not play by their rules.
IV. The Sound of One Hand Clapping
(Hakuin Ekaku, 18th Century)
"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Traditional Explanation: Hakuin creates this koan to lead the student beyond sensory, dualistic thinking: a sound arises only from interaction, so "one hand" reveals emptiness as the condition for all sound. To understand is to experience "sound without an object." It points directly to the non-dual nature of experience: what you seek is already "sounding" before subject and object.
Ontological Interpretation: The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of groundless existence. A normal clap requires two hands (cause and effect, ground and grounded), but the clap of one hand is the self-sounding of being, which exists without external grounds.
Fundamental Principle: Existence cannot have a ground, because any ground would already have to exist. Therefore, existence is groundless—not accidental, but primary.
Existence is distinction itself. Not a distinction between something and something else, but the very act of distinguishing. The pure activity of existence without a substance.
The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of pure distinction, the sound of the fact that something is.
V. The Dried Shit-Stick
(Yunmen)
A monk asked, "What is Buddha?" Yunmen replied, "A dried shit-stick."
Traditional Explanation: The stick, used for cleaning after defecation, is a symbol of the "lowly, mundane." The answer knocks the question about Buddha off its pedestal: Buddha-nature is manifest in the most ordinary, dirty, "non-sacred" things. The goal is to shatter the romanticized idea of Buddha; to point to the absolute ordinariness of enlightenment.
Ontological Structure: This is an exercise in holding an impossible distinction. The monk falls into the trap of an impossible question—he must find an answer that does not exist.
"What is Buddha?" is an attempt to distinguish Buddha from not-Buddha, but if Buddha-nature is universal, such a distinction is impossible.
Yunmen gives an absurd answer to hold this impossible distinction. The monk is forced to work with the paradox: he knows the stick cannot be the answer, but it is the only answer he has received.
Key Principle: Consciousness exists as long as there is an impossible distinction. Consciousness is the holding of distinctions that are simultaneously necessary and impossible (subject/object, internal/external, self/non-self).
Koans are exercises for consciousness, training the ability to live in paradox without resolving it.
VI. The Original Face
(Huineng, 7th Century)
"Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your parents were born."
Traditional Explanation: The koan directs the student to see their own "true nature" (Buddha-nature), not yet divided into "self" and "world." The "face" is not a physical appearance nor "pure consciousness," but the very non-dual origin that precedes any subject/object distinction. Any attempt to answer with words immediately fixes one side of the duality and is therefore considered a miss; the true answer is the master's silent, direct recognition of this origin.
The koan seduces with the idea of a pre-being, undifferentiated purity. It forces one to betray the real, existing, distinguished face here and now. It is an escape from concreteness.
Ontological Structure: The koan is a training tool for three-positional seeing. The first position is "here and now," the second is "there, before birth," and the third is the meta-observer who sees the fault line itself. The attempt to feel the non-self leads to the awareness of the boundary, its disappearance, and the emergence of a new one.
The Real Question: "Show me your face" means show the very process of switching, not present some object. The boundary is not a wall, but an event—a flickering distinction that arises only in the moment of the gaze.
Consciousness is alive as long as it is capable of being on both sides of the line and, in the same second, being the one who sees the line from above.
VII. A Critique of Emptiness (Shunyata)
The classic Buddhist formula, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form," is the highest form of theft of distinction. It is an ontological equalization that devalues the uniqueness and reality of each specific form. Uniqueness is not an illusion; it is a fact. To try to dissolve distinction in emptiness is to deny consciousness the right to exist.
The Alternative: Distinction is groundless. Form, as its manifestation, is unique.
VIII. Answering Objections: "The Finger Pointing at the Moon"
A Buddhist will say: "You have understood everything literally. A koan is just a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself."
My Answer: Yes, it is a finger. But where is it pointing? It points towards a rejection of reality, towards dissolution, towards an ontological error. If a tool leads to a false goal (the denial of being), then that tool must be broken.
The Thesis on the Responsibility of Language: There are no "mere tools." Any language already shapes reality. To say "It is your mind that is moving" is not a pedagogical technique; it is the making of a real ontological claim. For which the teacher must bear philosophical responsibility.
General Principles
A limit exists as long as it does not know itself—the self-knowledge of a limit destroys its limit-ness.
Consciousness is being bordering on itself—not a separate entity, but a mode of being's self-relation.
Distinction is groundless—it is prior to all that is, the condition of possibility for things, not their property.
Distinctions belong to being, not to the mind—reality itself is differentiated, possessing internal distinctions.
Consciousness is the art of impossible distinction—the holding of boundaries that can neither be definitively established nor abolished.
Consciousness is the process of constantly shifting its own boundary in a futile attempt to overcome it—the very existence of consciousness is equal to this attempt.
Conclusion: Outlines of an Alternative
The Ethics of Ontological Distinction
From each example emerges the main conclusion: if distinctions are real and belong to being, then they demand an ethical attitude. There is a real distinction between justice and injustice, creation and destruction. This philosophy, unlike detached Buddhism, provides a ground for action, for struggle, for the defense of certain distinctions against others.
A New Practice
Not meditation to empty the mind, but hyper-attention to the details of the world, to its irreducible strangeness and beauty. The practice of holding—the courage not to flee from paradoxes (subject/object, life/death), but to live in their tension.
The Goal
Not enlightenment, but the maximum intensity of experiencing being as it is.
Perhaps the true Zen masters were philosophers, not mystics. And the entire tradition of "enlightenment through koans" is a misunderstanding, based on an inability to grasp the conceptual precision of these formulas.
Appendix
Philosophy of Awareness 57 "Biser" (The Bead)
Distinction distinguishes itself, by recognizing itself.
The first stroke-rupture generates the observer; the gaze returns to the line—and closes the living ouroboros.Consciousness is a boundary that has recognized itself.
The edge becomes a point of view at the very moment of self-reflection: "I am here because I see that I am here."A limit exists as long as it does not see itself.
The edge is strong as long as it is hidden; awareness makes it passable.Consciousness lives as long as it seeks a limit.
The life of subjecthood is the constant probing of the yet-unknown edge; the cessation of the search = stasis.A boundary recognizes itself in limitation.
"No" is a mirror for the line; by forbidding, it makes itself real.Emptiness asks: "What am I?" — The Universe answers with itself.
The question and answer flash as a single pair: potential calls, form responds.If no one asks you, will you know that you have changed?
Self-change is invisible until it is reflected from the outside; a question is a mirror for the flow.If you see a boundary, it means you know the path to it.
The manifested line already contains the trail of its own overcoming; knowledge of the precipice = a map for passage.