- published: 03 Oct 2015
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A kōan ( /ˈkoʊ.ɑːn/; Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng'àn; Korean: 공안 (kong'an); Vietnamese: công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen-practice to provoke the "great doubt", and test a student's progress in Zen practice.
The word koan, literally "public case", comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters (公案).
Kōan is a Japanese rendering of the Chinese term (公案), transliterated kung-an (Wade-Giles) or gōng'àn (Pinyin).
Chung Feng Ming Pen (中峰明本 1263–1323) wrote that kung-an is an abbreviation for kung-fu an-tu (公府之案牘, Pinyin gōngfǔ zhī àndú, pronounced in Japanese as kōfu no antoku), which referred to a "public record" or the "case records of a public law court" in Tang-dynasty China.Kōan/kung-an thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle.
Commentaries in kōan collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. An article by T. Griffith Foulk claims
I saw you in my nightmare, glowing in the dark
Oh baby, baby tiger, I need you back
To hide the nights out of my sight
And when you reached the big tree, your belly reached mine
You tied me up with your feet and with your mouth
You made me come a thousand times (x 2)
And my heart might not be shaped like yours
But I swear it is big enough to be your home
I'm the milk in your cereal bowl
Oh baby, baby tiger, I tame you with my breast
I rub you in the shower, I'll do my best
And I know you're wild but we've got time
And I give you while the best I'll find
And my heart might not be shaped like yours
But I swear it is big enough to be your home