I have a serious meditation practice but I know very little about zen. I started reading some koans. I enjoyed many, but I found this one puzzling:
"As the roof was leaking, a zen Master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought a tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly praised."
I puzzled over it and then had an "aha" moment but I'm thinking I was kinda cheating. Specifically: The koan makes no sense-- this story never happened and the people involved don't even exist. The basket/tub thing is nonsense-- obviously a tub is better, and here I am twisting myself in knots trying to find a "deep" reason that the basket is better. In reality there isn't even a story here-- I'm actually just looking at some configuration of light on a screen.
This was illuminating for me, but my guess is that this is sort of "cheating." You could apply my thoughts to literally any koan at all, so what would be the point of koans in the first place if my conclusions are valid?
Anyone else have thoughts on what the koan itself means?
Submitted November 04, 2018 at 08:45PM by FTPickle https://ift.tt/2PaaVtt
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