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Zen Buddhists have a particular knack for making a virtue out of the inconsistencies arising from verbal communication, and with the koan system they have developed a unique way of transmitting their teachings completely non-verbally. Koans are carefully devised nonsensical riddles which are meant to make the student of Zen realize the limitations of logic and reasoning in the most dramatic way. The irrational wording and paradoxical content of these riddles makes it impossible to solve them by thinking. They are designed precisely to stop the thought process and thus to make the student ready for the non-verbal experience of reality. The contemporary Zen master Yasutani introduced a Western student to one of the most famous koans with the following words:

One of the best koans, because the simplest, is Mu. This is its background: A monk came to Joshu, a renowned Zen master in China hundreds of years ago, and asked: ‘Has a dog Buddha-nature or not? Joshu retorted, ‘Mu!’ Literally, the expression means ‘no’ or ‘not’, but the significance of Joshu’s answer does not lie in this. Mu is the expression of the living, functioning, dynamic Buddha nature. What you must do is discover the spirit or essence of this Mu, not through intellectual analysis but by search into your innermost being. Then you must demonstrate before me, concretely and vividly, that you understand Mu as living truth, without recourse to conceptions, theories, or abstract explanations. Remember, you can’t understand Mu through ordinary cognition, you must grasp it directly with your whole being. To a beginner, the Zen master will normally present either this Mu-koan or one of the following two:

‘What was your original face-the one you had before your parents gave birth to you?

‘You can make the sound of two hands clapping. Now what is the sound of one hand?

Excerpted from Page 48-49 of ‘The Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra