koan

Noun

koan (plural koans)

1. (Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable or parable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori.
   • Zen, with its absurdist koan, laughs at life much the way the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical system whose teacher answers the question, "How do you see things so clearly?" with the seeming one-liner, "I close my eyes"?1977, Thomas Hoover, chapter 1, in Zen Culture, →ISBN
2. A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment.
   • Gibberish. Or else a koan that Achtfaden isn’t equipped to master, a transcendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of light.1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
   • As always the koan “Why, Why am I here, why here” begins in her head, but she beats it back like a housewife with a broom.2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 303
3. A therapy technique used by Traditional Chinese medicinal physicians or medical practitioners to break a presenting patients habitual pattern of thinking that has been diagnosed as the primary cause of an illness or disease.