This report of Master Shuzan's words may be put to you, should you become a student of Zen, who will set about trying to understand it. Just imagine yourself in this situation for a minute or two. You will meditate upon it while sitting in formal meditation (zazen) or working, or doing anything in the normal day. You become the koan and the koan becomes you. The mind, to begin with, may work with it in the customary way - asking, asking, wondering: If I can't call it a staff and I can't say it isn't a staff, what can I call it? Is it a staff after all? Was it ever a staff in the past? What was it in essence? What kind of wood was it made fram? What am I? What am I made of? ... The mind questions, questions, questions, and then you are again sitting before the Zen master (roshi) who is waiting for your comment. You may make up one just to get out of a difficult situation, but the master will know you are practising the art of deception and you will be dismissed with the tinkle of a little bell. Back you go to your cushion ...

You start to think about other things as you sit there in the silence; you start to think about the next meal _ you begin to taste it; you start to think about home, but you must drag yourself back from those thoughts because you have got to face the roshi again and he will test your understanding. What are you going to say? What can you call a staff with no name? Did it ever have a name? Maybe it never did! If it never did have a name, did it ever exist? The mind trundles on, but then you begin to realize that the purpose of meditation is to see into your own true nature and that, really, the roshi isn't interested in the staff at all. There is a clue, then. So you ask yourself the question again but with less emphasis on what happened in the distant past, more on the living moment, gradually coming closer, nearer to this point in time. Other questions begin to emerge, but in the meantime you are to see the roshi again. What will you say now?

The psychological pressure is part of the process. When your answer reveals a lack of insight you are sent back to your sitting cushion with an encouraging word, a sharp rebuke, or just indifference. And if you do suddenly think the nature of existence is penetrated and seen for what it is, the master will know if you are deluding yourself.

Many of the koans are more immediate - What is this? You may be asked to keep 'What is this?' in the mind day and night. Such questions have no reference to time and place and no relevance to your life until you bring them to this very moment.

Koans are often described as paradoxical or nonsensical because they cannot be made sense of by the intellect, but they are not meant to be. This is the whole point - a koan is not a riddle, it is a device to take one beyond thinking and the limitations of the conceptual mind into the spiritual dimension. All koans refer to one's true nature, buddha-nature, or, as it is sometimes referred to in Zen, one's 'original face'. A student may work on one of these for years and then be given another one to bring a different perspective into consciousness, or to refresh the practice which has become stale. The breakthrough may be many years in coming, but all of a sudden the buddhanature is realized. This could happen at any time, perhaps while engaged in manual work.

- Diana St. Ruth and Richard St. Ruth, The Simple Guide to Zen Buddhism

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