Sublime

One old koan tells the story of a student who asks his teacher for permission to leave the monastery. “Where do you want to go?” the teacher asks. “Around on pilgrimage,” replies the student. The teacher presses him, “What is the purpose of a pilgrimage?” After all, doesn’t practice teach us that everything we’re looking for is already right here?

Beginning students will often be preoccupied with trying to “answer” koans, not understanding that the questions posed by koans aren’t the kind of questions that have answers. Instead, koans are stories designed to help us see beyond the dichotomy of questions and answers, to enable us to stay with what seems like an irresolvable paradox, to stay

Then he went up the first set of stairs after all, his mind playing with the memory of the remark the guard Willem had made that the court was attracted by guilt, from which it actually followed that the room for the inquiry would have to be located off whatever stairway K. chanced to choose.