koans

All my important teachers/mentors have used koans. I well remember finally encountering the actual word reading Zen literature at sea in the fifties ... Blyth, Suzuki (Daisetz Teitaro) & others. Then my fellow dharma bums were throwing it around. But the experience of it went back to my early childhood, first at the bus stop with questions and challenging words to work on after the bus had departed. & with my Grandfather Roberts, quoting from history, telling me tales & inciting my curiousity. Later people like C.B. Stewart used words, poems and teachings to challenge my assumptions and to encourage questions and deeper learning. One of my most important latter teachers, Frederick Franck, insisted upon ontological questions concerning what humanity is, what the human has to be in order to claim humaness as a working birthright. His central koan echoes countless others, "Who Am I?" His seminal volume "What Does It Mean to Be Human? Reverence for Life Reaffirmed by Responses from Around the World (compiled and edited with Janis Roze & Richard Connolly) includes the responses of many many people on the subject. His "Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred" is a wide ranging pilgrimage to cover many many areas of his spiritual pilgrimage, and ends with a focus on humanity.