Straight to the Heart of Zen: Eleven Classic Koans and Their Inner Meanings

A koan is a learning aid for Zen Buddhists, the equivalent of which would be a slap in the face. A koan "will mercilessly take away all our intellect and knowledge," as one Japanese Zen teacher put it. Philip Kapleau finds a gentler phrase: "One of the great virtues of koans is they get us to think, not in an analytical way, but with our complete mind." (page 27)One of the most famous koans is the question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Another one, in the form of question and answer, is "Does a dog have Buddha nature? - Answer: Wu" (very good as an answer, and very funny once you've got the inside track). In Philip Kapleau's book "Straight to the Heart of Zen," the reader encounters some examples of less famous koans.The book presents 11 koans, arranged and edited from taped speeches of the 88-year old Philip Kapleau, one of the foremost American teachers of Zen Buddhism. The audience of the speeches were students with a solid background in the subject. For this reason the book is not, in my opinion, an easy introductory text.My patience with doctrine and jargon is very limited, so I found myself skipping some paragraphs in the book every once in a while. But there are true jewels in this book, too. My favorite jewel is the illustration of a koan with the poem "The Snow Man" by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). The koan is called "Layman P'ang's Beautiful Snowflakes":When Layman P'ang took leave of Yakusan [a famous Chinese Zen master (745-828)] on a snowy winter day, Yakusan asked ten students to escort him to the temple gate to bid him farewell. The Layman, pointing to the falling snowflakes, said, "Beautiful snowflakes - they fall nowhere." One of the students asked him, "Where do the flakes fall, then?" The Layman slapped him.So where do they fall, then? Here's Wallace Stevens's answer:One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in the sound of the wind.In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the landFull of the same windThat is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.But then again, one should not take it so seriously after all:now then, let's go outto enjoy the snow . . . untilI slip and fall!(Basho, 5 January 1588)

Recently I saw a book called "Zen and the Art of Driving" and ever since I've had a sinking feeling of 'McDonald's Zen(TM)' somehow taking over. This book certainly cuts through some of the intellectual overviews of koans that people seem to feel provide "answers".Kapleau works with only a few of the most 'common' koans, providing the koan and standard commentary. He then moves into a true discussion that cuts to the heart of the koan but all the time walking the razor's edge of conceptualization. That is, there is enough here to help someone who is, perhaps, starting to get interested in this 'new age' thing called Zen but not too much that the person thinks they understand it all by simply reading a book.Kapleau has some interesting Western insight to bring to the discussion but it is also obvious that his Eastern knowledge runs deep. An excellent book for both the newcomer and long-time practioner.

Zen koans require us to face the limits of our intellect, and then get beyond those limits (p. 18). "Koans are not intellectual puzzles or conundrums, nor are they tricky or clever," 89-year-old Roshi Philip Kapleau writes in the Introduction to this collection of eleven Zen talks ("teishos"); "rather, they are direct and profound. Every koan points to our True Face and True Home . . . To realize the essence of a koan is to realize the primal condition of one's own mind--a state of awareness, freedom, wisdom, and compassion . . . In essence, koans are tools designed by spiritual geniuses of ancient China to help us realize the truth of our own nature and the nature of all living things, and to do so in the midst of our ordinary lives" (p. 2). This 173-page book is organized into three sections, "Koans of the Buddha," "Koans of the Great Lay Practitioners," and "Koans of Our Lives," and each of the eleven teachings here reveal that "ordinary life, our ordinary life just as it is, is a life of supreme awakening" (p. 28). "The world of Zen is all around us," Kapleau tells us. "You can enter the gate anywhere, at any opportunity, if you are alert" (p. 84). Why study difficult koans? "Old habits of the mind run deep," Kapleau explains (p. 74). We acknowledge by practicing Zen, by studying koans, that we have outgrown unreliable, self-defeating routes to happiness. We don't need to study Buddhist koans to awaken, Kapleau says, but "it can truly help" (p. 41). "Zen is the heart of the Buddha's teaching, and as such it deals with the most fundamental problem of all, birth and death, a mystery every human being must resolve . . . Koans are not, as many people think, tricky puzzles. They point us to the realities, the eternal truths, of our ordinary life itself. They reveal fundamental teachings of the Buddha, who was a great realist. He did not invent truths. He experienced and taught what is. But koans reveal these truths in a uniquely creative way. Rather than simply deacribing or talking about them, koans force us to experience these truths for ourselves. And then they prompt us to feel and live from this experience. Rather than adding to our knowledge, they transform us" (p. 110).Conversational in tone, and easy to follow, Kapleau's dharma talks will take you straight to the heart of of Zen Buddhism, and they will touch your mind in a way that could illuminate your life with new meaning.G. Merritt