Word: koans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Some of a Zen pupil's meditation is devoted to koans -short problems without logical solutions, set by the individual's Zen master and designed to wrench the mind free of ordinary thinking. (Sample koan: "A monk asked. 'Who is Buddha?' The master answered, 'Three pounds of flax.' ") Other meditation is devoted to breath control, plus a kind of concentration on nothingness and what Ruth Sasaki describes as "handling one's mind...
...with enlightenment, which he calls satori. Enlightenment is often achieved by means that are shocking, in every sense of the word. A master may help his student to satori by hitting him with a staff (pang) or roaring at him (pang-ho). A less physical shock technique is the koan, a problem designed to shock the mind beyond mere thinking. "You know the sound of two hands struck together," goes one koan. "what is the sound of one hand?" There is no trick answer; each disciple must find his own. One monk replied by toppling over as though dead...
...masters who have attained enlightenment. One of the most likely candidates is blond, ruddy Walter Nowick, 30, a World War II veteran, raised on a Long Island potato farm, who is now studying at Kyoto's Sokokuji Temple. Nowick rises each morning at four to meditate on a koan such...
Curiosities make up a good part of the collection. A special glans case houses the cigar that Edwin Booth was about to smoke when he died of a heart attack, and there is also the death mask of the great British actor, Edmund Koan...