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{{quote|'''Doctor Lao:''' Do you know what wisdom is?
'''Mike:''' No, sir.
'''Doctor Lao:''' Wise answer.|''--[[
A pithy saying used as a type of verbal [[Logic Bomb]] meant to short-circuit logical thinking and force the listener into deep contemplation outside of the framework of words. While the term is from Zen Buddhism, similar logic-breaking aphorisms exist in other mystical and non-mystical traditions as well.
A superficial or poorly considered epigram of this type runs the risk of becoming an [[Ice Cream Koan]]. Has nothing to do with the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' character of the same name.
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* When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
* Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born.
* Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water.
* [[Lord British Postulate|If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him]].
** Because the true Buddha is inside of us, so that is the false Buddha - [[CSI|or a tired monk who doesn't drive because he can't control his anger.]]
* The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. [[Buffy-Speak|Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.]] Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?
** [[Final Fantasy VII|The Temple of the Ancients.]]
** Or you can make new words from your larynx once you need to use them again, just as one makes a a new fish trap or rabbit snare when one needs to use them again.
* A student asked the master, "What is Buddha?" The master said;
** "Three pounds of flax."
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** It can also mean "Unask the question", saying the question is meaningless.
*** [[Wild Mass Guessing|This may be a possible use of word play with the aforementioned pun.]] The question may only be answered by a dog, but a dog could not answer, only bark, therefore it is meaningless to ask.
** If you're a computer programmer, "NULL" would be a good translation.
*** The use of koans relating to programming is a LISP tradition. It would eval to NIL
*** And if you're [[Friends|Joey Tribiani]], it's a cow's opinion.
* How long has it been since someone touched [[Our Souls Are Different|part of you other than your body?]]
* A student confronted the master in his study and asked him "How can you teach people to speak spiritual freedom when you keep your pet bird in a cage?" The master opened the cage door and the bird flew out the window, never to be seen again. The master said "That bird is now free. You owe me a bird."
* Matthew 8:21-22 contains an example of a Christian koan, "A disciple said to Jesus [before they embark], "Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' Jesus said, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.' "
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The Ming (Name) that can be named is not the everlasting Ming. }}
** The legend of how this book came to be was that Lao Tzu was leaving on a journey (that he ultimately didn't return from) when a fan of his stopped him at the gate and asked him to leave some words for prosperity. Given that context, it's easy to wonder if Lao Tzu was humoring the man or just trolling him. (Then again, Zen Masters aren't above trolling if that's what it takes to reach Enlightenment.)
** It's probably riffing on the idea that no true philosophy can be described in one word, and if one word can be used to encapsulate it, then that word must be a false representation. The word itself can convey no meaning for the philosophy behind it unless that philosophy is known, and if the philosophy is known, then the word itself is redundant. Surprisingly, this has been a popular idea for centuries, and even Charles Baudelaire tried to deconstruct it ([[Creator Breakdown|that said, between the alcohol, drugs and sex, he wasn't really that successful at deep philosophical truths that weren't mired in deep revelations about the base horror of humanity]]).
* Randomly presented: "The more shallow a person's life is, the deeper it turns out to be."
** Hence why Paris Hilton has so many fans hanging on her every word.
* [http://rinkworks.com/words/proverbs.shtml Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.]
* There are mild trance-inducing phrases that will turn someone to inner contemplation to figure out what you're talking about while you slip away unnoticed. For example:
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** Continuing the above, the end-all is probably the [[Armor-Piercing Question]] ''clapping against what?''
*** In the case of one [[Discworld]] guru who had just had a near-{{smallcaps| Death}} experience, [[Dope Slap|clapping against the side of The Student's head]].
*** "Clap" is onomatopoeia, therefore the sound of one hand clapping, is "clap". Whether or not it is physically possible is irrelevant; if that is what is occurring, hypothetically, then the answer can be just as hypothetical and still be correct.
*** Put out your hand. Eventually, someone will offer a handshake.
* ''[http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html The Tao of Programming]'' (not to be confused with ''The Tao of Computing'', a book by Henry M. Walker) has been circulating the Internet for years, and recasts many of the better known koans and parables within the context of late 20th-century computing culture:
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard," said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.}}▼
▲The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
** Also [http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/ Rootless Root]
* From [https://web.archive.org/web/20130827121341/http://cosman246.com/jargon.html The Jargon File,] ''Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine'':
** A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.
* [[Neuromancer]] is famous for its use of a large number of koans (including some from the Gateless Gate) by {{spoiler|a philosophical AI}}. Some, but not all, are plot-related.
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* The Doctor has a koan-off with a Roman soothsayer in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Fires of Pompeii".
* The Vorlons in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' seem to be extremely fond of koans. Indeed, Ambassador Kosh seems incapable of speaking in anything else.
** Are you listening [[Ice Cream Koan|to the music?]].
*** The above quote references the episode "Deathwalker". To be fair, though, while that time Kosh ''was'' probably [[Ice Cream Koan|being meaningless]] as part of his misdirection (in contrast to the usual, where there is meaning in his crypticism - often lots of it), a few of his lines are worth paying attention to. Certainly his final words to Talia, where he actually comes close to telling her straight what just happened (as straight as a Vorlon will, anyway...). Also, "a stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from the bristles" is very interesting given later revelations about Vorlon philosophy and Kosh's individualism.
* [[The Other Wiki]] has a page of these, adapted to its own problems: [[wikipedia:WP:ZEN|The Zen of Wikipedia.]]
* ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good
* In a similar vein, [[Night World]] has "The Night has a thousand eyes and the Day only one."
* Speaking of ''Beyond Good and Evil'', [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] is famous for writing a great deal of what amount to koans; his book ''Twilight of the Idols'' is composed of almost nothing but pithy one-line aphorisms such as "'All truth is simple.' Is that not doubly a lie?" This is likely intentional; Nietzsche regarded Buddhism as the supreme form of Eastern nihilism, and the problem of Western nihilism was his area of interest.
* Subverted in the
* There's one in ''[[Ishmael]]'' when the narrator first enters the 'classroom': with man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?
** With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?
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''"Love is what you make of it," she said.'' }}
** In a similar vein to the ''[[Mage]]'' example above, there's a spell called Paralyzing Contradiction. It creates a glyph of one of the Ineffable Koans, which makes people stop what they're doing until they find their own answer. Stupid people don't realise there's a puzzle, and are unaffected.
* In ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures
* Satirized brilliantly in the [[Discworld]] book ''Thief of Time'':
{{quote|In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised. a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied. }}
* In the ''[[Nanoha
* in ''The Fall of [[Hyperion]]'', that's what humans hear when attempting to communicate with the [[Deus Ex Machina|Technocore]] [[Starfish Aliens|Starfish AI's]]
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