Koans

FROM THE MOMENT LANGUAGE blinked into existence, humans have tried to hold onto the words that accompany our mysterious moments of insight. We’ve etched them on bones, written them on papyrus scrolls, attached them to the refrigerator with a magnet.

A bit more than a millennium ago, people in China started to call these words koans. They were sayings, records of conversations, bits of verse, and stories. It appears that koans came out of a very old tradition of improvised, spoken word poetry, art that crystallized out of a particular moment of insight.

Soon there were great