Koan: Encyclopedia II - Koan - Etymology and the evolving meaning of koan

Koan - Etymology and the evolving meaning of koan

Koan 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 àndú, pronounced in Japanese as ko-fu no an-toku), which referred to a "public record" or the "case records of a public law court"⁴ in Tang-dynasty China. Koan/kung-an thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality that go beyond the private opinion of one person. A teacher's test also resembles the judgement of a student's ability to recognize and actualize that principle. Moreover, commentaries in koan collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. An article by T. Griffith Foulk claims ``...Its literal meaning is the "table" or "bench" [an] of a "magistrate" or "judge" [kung]..."⁴. Apparently, kung-an was itself originally a metaphor—an article of furniture that came to denote legal precedents.

Before the tradition of meditating on koans was recorded, Huangbo Xiyun (720-814) and Yun Men (864-949) are both recorded to have uttered the line "Yours is a clear-cut case (chien-cheng kung-an) but I spare you thirty blows", seeming to pass judgement over students' feeble expressions of enlightenment. Xuedou Zhongxian (雪竇重顯 980-1052)—the original compiler of the 100 cases that later served as the basis for the Blue Cliff Record—used the term kung-an just once in that collection (according to Foulk⁴) in Case #64.

Yuanwu (圜悟克勤 1063-1135), compiler of the Blue Cliff Record (碧巌録) in its present form, "gained some insight" by contemplating (kan) koans⁵. Yuanwu may have been instructed to contemplate phrases by his teachers Chen-ju Mu-che (dates unknown) and Wu-tzu Fa-yen (五祖法演 ?-1104). Thus, by the Sung Dynasty, the term kung-an had apparently taken on roughly its present meaning from the legal jargon.

Subsequent interpreters have influenced the way the term koan is used. Dogen Zenji wrote of Genjokoan, which relates everyday life experiences to koans. Hakuin Ekaku recommended preparing for koan practice by concentrating on qi breathing and its effect on the body's center of gravity, called the tanden or hara in Japanese—thereby associating koan practice with pre-existing Taoist and Yogic chakra meditative practices.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etymology and the evolving meaning of koan", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki