ZEN - first look

I was not aware of the complete meaning of a line “toughest things in life are always presented in simpler forms”, until I met myself with the ZEN koans. Understanding the simplest things in life are made the most complicated subjects. Take an example, truth is a virtue to be followed and following it, leads you to progress in the most respectful way but are we truthful to everybody we meet? No. Why? We have thousands of reasons to support our mistakes but what was the expected at that moment? Not to lie. It is simple to read it as a line but to follow it is a challenge. Few years back, I used to read these koans as witty stories in my native language weeklies but now after coming to engage myself in trying to understand the in depth meaning of the koans, has left me completely awestruck.

Talking about Zen, it is a variety of Buddhism. A thousand years after Lord Buddha, a monk from India had come to China in 520 A.D (believed to be so) with a modified form of Buddhism. It became widely practiced in China and then stepped on to Japan, under the name Zen. Zen now flourishes majorly in Japan. The traveler who brought Zen into China was Bodhidharma (Bhodi = Enlightened; Dharma = Truthful way). Following Bodhidharma, Zen was transmitted through a body of monks and a series of patriarchs – each patriarch leaving his robe and begging bowl to his chosen successor as a badge of office. Zen neglects karma, reincarnation and nirvana, but demands meditation, concentration and physical discipline.

Just a few lines of some writing and we end up in a different world, if we understand its complete meaning. Koans in my opinion are not puzzles or questions or stories or riddles, they are statements of life. Well the answers to koans are unlimited in number or just one. How you see life? What you talk? What you think? What you experience? What you want? What you can do? in addition with so many other questions like these together define the answer to the koans, leaving every single reader with different meanings or meaning towards his/her life. It gives answers to simple ways of happy living which we complicate to make it harder to live.

Basically koans have an unimaginable ending, leading to one and only conclusion of ‘no conclusion to the just read koan’; this leaves the reader in a complete frustration but I find the need to develop the skill of thinking, patience and insight view on life are the hidden teachings along with its focused meaning, from the so found koans. When not given an answer to a problem, we have a choice to find the solution or to avoid it, but from my little understanding of koans I feel benefits are there by taking it into you or by leaving it aside. Well to explain in a clearer way, when you come across something and you purposefully overlook it, it doesn’t actually hurt you by any means but would have affected you in some means which you are about to find out, sometime, in the near future or later. A koan avoided just tells you that a little more maturity and experience is required to understand its message or it was a koan never designed for you.

Koans are not monks alone cup of tea, as understanding them can be fully revealed not by being a loner but staying and living among people. Zen teachings focus on attaining enlightenment, which is obtained when we use them to overlook logic. Not every koan is useful; it is made useful according to our needs. It is our perception as they never impose a way to see them, leaving it to be subjective as you never know what a koan has for you.