A Koan is a Banana Peel
The ancient Zen practice of koan study is alive in Oakland. David Weinstein, Roshi, is the teacher at the Oakland Zendo (OZ), and has been studying koans for thirty years.
Koans are the cryptic and paradoxical questions and stories that are often associated with Zen Buddhism in popular culture. Many people have heard the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
A student works his or her way through a series of koans and must “pass” each before receiving the next from his teacher. They are often drawn from one of several classic collections in Zen literature.
When asked to say what a koan is, Weinstein replied, “A koan is a banana peel- you slip on it, then you're up in the air, and then you come down again- and you've been changed in the process.”
Weinstein reports that he first encountered koans thirty years ago as a Zen student in Hawaii. “I hated them!” he says. “I did not like what they did to my consciousness. After some years of practicing Tibetan meditation, I had achieved a state of equanimity- I thought. Koans just upset the apple cart. I did not think that was meditation, or what meditation was supposed to do.
Weinstein recalls that he came to an agreement with his teacher that he did not want to do koans and that the teacher could not help him. “But, in the midst of the resistance, I think I knew deep down that there was something there that was interesting. Equanimity was okay, but I wasn't entirely alive- and koans, though disturbing, did feel enlivening. That got my attention.”
Weinstein thought he was done with koans. However, a few years later, he encountered them again, this time in the person of Yamada roshi, a revered Japanese Zen master.
The Oakland Zendo can be contacted at 510.531.5779
(see Part 2)
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Stephen Colgan can be contacted at StephenColganMFT@sbcglobal.net
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