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English
Etymology
From Japanese 公案 (kōan), which was from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).
Pronunciation
Noun
koan (plural koans)
- (Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori.
1977, Thomas Hoover, chapter 1, in Zen Culture, →ISBN:Zen, with its absurdist koan, laughs at life much the way the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical system whose teacher answers the question, "How do you see things so clearly?" with the seeming one-liner, "I close my eyes"?
- A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment.
1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:Gibberish. Or else a koan that Achtfaden isn’t equipped to master, a transcendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of light.
2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 303:As always the koan “Why, Why am I here, why here” begins in her head, but she beats it back like a housewife with a broom.
- A therapy technique used by Traditional Chinese medicinal physicians or medical practitioners to break a presenting patients habitual pattern of thinking that has been diagnosed as the primary cause of an illness or disease.[1]
Translations
References
- ^ chapter 404, in process.ogleschool.edu, 2023 September 20 (last accessed)
Anagrams
French
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 公案 (kōan), from Literary Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, literally “public case”).
Pronunciation
Noun
koan m (plural koan)
- koan
Further reading
Anagrams
Hungarian
Etymology
From English koan, from Japanese 公案 (kōan), from Literary Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn) (literally, "public case").
Pronunciation
Noun
koan (plural koanok)
- koan
Declension
Volapük
Noun
koan (nominative plural koans)
- shell, seashell
Declension
declension of koan
- 1 status as a case is disputed
- 2 in later, non-classical Volapük only
Derived terms
Yola
Noun
koan
- Alternative form of cooan
References
- Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 51