Read time 6 minutes. Koan Practice is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox.
We’ve been exploring the role paradox plays in cultivating a stable Zen mindset. Each paradox nudges us out of conventional thinking and into a new way of being. Today, let’s pause and step back. What is paradox, truly, in practice? And why does Zen lean so heavily upon it? A brief look at koan practice will reveal how paradox works not as puzzle, but as a living instrument of transformation.
“Koan practice is not about answering questions, but about embodying the question itself, living with it, and being transformed by it.”
—Shinge Roshi
Understanding koan practice
In simple terms, a koan is a paradoxical statement or question. It doesn’t ask for a clever solution. It invites us to dwell in the unknown.
In our last lesson, we sat with the phrase the only constant is change. That single statement is itself a koan. Traditional logic says it’s nonsense. But if we linger with it, if we let the words rearrange how we see, it opens a doorway into something else: the unresolvable nature of existence itself.
Here in the West, koans often appear as novelties—“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”—something curious, maybe even amusing. But novelty misses the point. A koan is not central on this site the way breath or listening might be, yet perhaps it should be. Because koan practice reveals something essential about how awakening unfolds.
The first hurdle
Take that familiar koan: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
At first, you may picture a hand moving through the air. Maybe you imagine smacking your thigh, or your fingers against your palm. Maybe you even try it.
This is the problem-solving mind stepping in. “What’s the right answer?” it asks. That reflex is your first hurdle.
There is no need to scold yourself. Your mind is doing exactly what it was trained to do: fix problems, find solutions. Now the practice asks you to do something strange: hold the riddle, but don’t demand an answer. Live inside the question itself.
Is there no answer? Or is there a kind of answer that can’t be carried by words? Already, the paradox is doing its work.
Ego: The great problem-solver
The mind is a powerful servant. But it is also the ego’s favored weapon. Ego insists it can fix everything—including suffering, including practice itself.
This is the ego’s god complex. And here lies another paradox: the end of ego-identification is the end of suffering. But will ego willingly step aside to meet its own end? Hardly.
“In koan practice, we confront the self and are forced to question the very nature of our understanding. This confrontation is not with intellectual ideas, but with the deepest, most existential aspects of our being.”
—D.T. Suzuki
Koan practice sidesteps this battle. It doesn’t attack ego directly, which would only trigger more defense. Instead, it gives ego nothing to grasp. A paradox can’t be solved by strategy, so ego has to pause. That pause, however brief, opens a space. And in that space, another kind of seeing can enter.
The role of koan practice in direct experience
Koans are not about outside validation, not about answers delivered by authority. The ego craves outside confirmation. But true insight comes from within.
Koan practice creates conditions for that shift. When dualistic logic runs aground, when there’s nothing left to push against, experience itself begins to speak.
“The essential aspect of koan practice is the challenge to the mind to go beyond duality. It is a way to bring the thinking mind to a point of no-mind, where direct experience unfolds.”
—Shodo Harada Roshi
“Koan practice is the art of seeing deeply into the fabric of life itself. By bringing our full attention to a single point of inquiry, we strip away layers of illusion and encounter reality directly.”
—John Tarrant Roshi
Dualistic logic sorts everything into opposites—right/wrong, true/false. But koans turn that machinery against itself. They invite the collapse of duality. And when duality collapses, so do the walls around our awareness.
Embracing the unknown
Return to the statement: the only constant is change.
Traditional logic shrugs. It’s inconsistent, self-contradictory. Nonsense. And yet something in us knows it’s true. Living with impermanence, moment by moment, we embody that truth. Consistency/change dissolves into each other.
This is the virtue of the unknown. Paradox forces us to release habitual certainty. In that release, space opens for direct contact with reality.
“Koan practice is not for intellectual understanding; it is for deep realization. The true meaning of a koan cannot be grasped by the ordinary mind, but only through direct, experiential insight.”
—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
When we stop demanding literal answers, we also drop baggage: expectations, preconceptions, ideals about what practice should look like. We empty the cup. And in that emptying, realization becomes possible.
A new approach to a familiar question
So, what is the sound of one hand clapping?
I could hand you an answer, but that would defeat the purpose. Instead, consider questions that circle around it:
What isn’t the sound of one hand clapping? Must there even be a sound?
Are two clapping hands the same, or are they different? How about you and me? Are we the same or different? Does anything in the universe act alone? Does it ever take just one to tango?
Traditional logic says: one hand clapping makes no sound. Correct, in its way. But if the koan is pointless, why has it survived for centuries?
The point is not solution but transformation. The koan is not trying to be answered in the ordinary sense. It is trying to be lived.
The many levels of koan practice
If this feels overwhelming, that’s natural. Koans are not easy. But unlike riddles, they don’t demand black-or-white resolution.
“In koan practice, there is no distinction between practice and enlightenment. The koan is the practice, and the practice is the realization. Both are one.”
—Eihei Dogen
This is the heart of koan practice: it is not about acquiring insight later. It is about embodying insight now, in the act of inquiry itself.
You may not feel transformed in an instant. That doesn’t mean the koan has failed. It means it’s still working. It means the question is loosening the grip of logic, loosening the ego’s demand for answers.
Koan practice trains us to live in uncertainty. To rest in not-knowing. To discover that not-knowing itself is liberation.
Explore more:
Oftentimes between practice and realization lie moments of great doubt or confusion. Koan practice is no exception. Hakuin Ekaku was an ancient 17th century master who purports to have experienced just such a sickness. This wonderful story on Buddhism Now conveys how he came to deal with his great doubt by coming to know such methods as introspective meditation and the soft-butter method.
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