A coan is a lesson and a fable in the Zen tradition. There is usually no solution, or moral. The student must figure out what the lesson is. In the west, fables were standardized by Aesop, and a few others. Aesop added the more obvious “moral” to his, to snap his materialistic audience into the virtue he was trying to illustrate. The unmotivated Romans expected the fables to be entertaining. A Zen coan is more like a puzzle to be solved, and sometimes unsolvable.
CLICK HERE: An Original Coan
I’m really having fun with this! I replaced what you wrote in Facebook with what you sent in the last email. Keep those cards and letters coming! :-)!
I see you found my description of a coan on my Facebook blog. Thank you so much for posting my writing.–Kathryn