The Koan: texts and contexts in Zen Buddhism

Koans are enigmatic spiritual formulas used for religious training in the Zen Buddhist tradition. This innovative religious practice is one of the most distinctive elements of this tradition, which originated in medieval China and spread to Japan and Korea. Perhaps no dimension of Asian religious has attracted so much interest in the West, and its influence is apparent from beat poetry to deconstructive literary critisism. The essays collected in this volume, all previously; unpublished, argue that our understanding of the koan tradition has been severely limited. The authors try to undermine stereotypes and problematic interpretations by examining previously unrecognized factors in the formation of the tradition, and by highlighting the rich complexity and remarkable; diversity of koan practice and literature.

The form and function of Koan literature: a historical overview / T. Griffith Foulk -- The antecedents of encounter dialogue in Chinese Chʻan Buddhism / John R. McRae -- Mahākāsyapa's smile: silent transmission and the Kung-an (Kōan) tradition / Albert Welter -- Kung-an Chʻan and the Tsung-men tʻung-yao chi / Ishii Shūdō -- Visions, divisions, revisions: the encounter between iconoclasm and supernaturalism in Kōan cases about Mount Wu-tʻai / Steven Heine -- "Before the empty eon" versus "A dog has no Buddha-nature": Kung-an use in the Tsʻao-tung tradition and Ta-hui's Kung-an introspection Chʻan / Morten Schlütter -- Kōan history: transformative language in Chinese Buddhist thought / Dale S. Wright -- Ikkyū and Kōans / Alexander Kabanoff -- Transmission of Kirigami (secret initiation documents): a Sōtō practice in medieval Japan / Ishikawa Rikizan -- Emerging from nonduality: Kōan practice in the Rinzai tradition since Hakuin / Michel Mohr -- Kōan and Kenshō in the Rinzai Zen curriculum / G. Victor Sōgen Hori.