A koan is a riddle or puzzle that Zen Buddhists use during meditation to help them unravel greater truths about the world and about themselves. Zen masters have been testing their students with these ...

The famous question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is a Zen koan; a deliberately obtuse poem used by Buddhists to probe reality and test one's ignorance. Zen Koans, by Steven Heine.

In his new book, Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality, physicist Anthony Aguirre explores deep questions about the nature of reality, using an approach inspired by Zen koans ...

As defined by Dictionary.com, koan [koh-ahn] is a nonsensical or paradoxical question to a student for which an answer is demanded, the stress of meditation on the question often being illuminating.

Koans are paradoxical statements intended to derail mental business-as-usual for the Zen Buddhist student on the journey to enlightenment. A book about koans at first glance seems itself paradoxical, ...

Eve Myonen Marko and Wendy Egyoku Nakao. Monkfish, $18.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-948626-08-8 Zen teachers Marko and Nakao (Appreciate Your Life) update centuries-old koan stories and ...

A Zen Koan for Post-Valentine’s Day: Do you have “healthy doubt” or “unhealthy doubt” about whether your partner is “The One”? First let me say a word about the Zen Koan. Within Zen meditation ...

It’s too easy, right? Too simple — shoving Christopher Columbus off the historical honor roll, pulling down his statues, yanking his “day” away from him and renaming it in honor of the people he ...

Henry Shukman considers the Zen koan to be the most condensed narrative. “They are very inscrutable. They make no sense to the mind, but they can bring on a dramatic shift in how we experience and see ...