Zen Koans, and questions of faith
Aug. 27th, 2010 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueSo one of the ideas I was pondering recently - I had just been to a funeral, and my mind was going in all manner of odd directions.
In Zen Buddhism, you have the concept of the Koan. Which is: "a story, dialogue, question or statement, which cannot be understood by rational thinking, but may be accessible through intuition."
Now chances are if you've run into the term, you've had it get a bit garbled - much like haiku, what it means to 'us westerners' isn't the same as the original meaning, as it gets lost in translation.
I've always rather liked the notion, that you have 'something' that acts as an axis for insight to revolve around. A question for which there is no real correct answer, merely a state of mind or insight which the question frames.
Which lead me to the notion - previous I've rambled a bit about faith. The problem with faith, is there's a lot of circular references there - faith is, because faith is. Define God, and chances are that definition precludes analysis.
So if I ask the question "Is there a God?" then I will get as many variants of an answer as people I ask. And that should be so - to give someone elses answer: "Even though that is true, if you do not know it yourself, it does you no good".
The question and the answer are in many ways irrelevant. The contemplation of the question, and the self awareness one can derive is what's important. Here's where it goes wrong though - Organised religion invites you to accept someone elses answer to the question. How can that ever be right? Atheists are much the same though.
We can argue this question back and forth, and never reach resolution. That's good, as long as whilst we do so, we're open to the self awareness that contemplation of a Koan may lead us to.
In Zen Buddhism, you have the concept of the Koan. Which is: "a story, dialogue, question or statement, which cannot be understood by rational thinking, but may be accessible through intuition."
Now chances are if you've run into the term, you've had it get a bit garbled - much like haiku, what it means to 'us westerners' isn't the same as the original meaning, as it gets lost in translation.
I've always rather liked the notion, that you have 'something' that acts as an axis for insight to revolve around. A question for which there is no real correct answer, merely a state of mind or insight which the question frames.
Which lead me to the notion - previous I've rambled a bit about faith. The problem with faith, is there's a lot of circular references there - faith is, because faith is. Define God, and chances are that definition precludes analysis.
So if I ask the question "Is there a God?" then I will get as many variants of an answer as people I ask. And that should be so - to give someone elses answer: "Even though that is true, if you do not know it yourself, it does you no good".
The question and the answer are in many ways irrelevant. The contemplation of the question, and the self awareness one can derive is what's important. Here's where it goes wrong though - Organised religion invites you to accept someone elses answer to the question. How can that ever be right? Atheists are much the same though.
We can argue this question back and forth, and never reach resolution. That's good, as long as whilst we do so, we're open to the self awareness that contemplation of a Koan may lead us to.
