Zen Koan

As a child, I was (and still am) severely fascinated by the vary nature of understanding; how and why people understand what they do and that came to be.  Though the physical aspect of this has an appeal of its own, it was the psychological and philosophical side that thoroughly captured my young imagination.

In my own way, as I was growing into more and more angst against the circumstances of what I was experiencing around me, I would escape into the world of the mind, my own little oasis where my fascination with how things worked would keep me occupied and distracted from the family fights and stresses that my tween mind didn't yet understand how to deal with.  This world of literature, art, math, concepts, was the perfect playground for me, where I especially didn't have to confront the awkwardness and anxiety I had developed at the sudden attraction I was realizing was growing for the girls around me.  As I was changing, this world of the mind had the appeal of being concrete, ironically speaking, for the very fact that it was always evolving and through it, I was always realizing more, thus a sense of change, but one that I was in control of instead of being dragged through.

As I imagined many budding rebel children pursue, I started seeking more radical reads and things generally shunned by others, the more an idea or story scared someone, the more I had to know why.  This lead me through Wicca, Kaos, Satanism, Nhilism, Rules for Radicals, Buddhism, Taoism, and so many other -isms, all parts of the puzzle that was to become my prism for viewing things.  There were so many great ideas, so many great questions and possible answers and even un-answers, but none ever stood out quite like a Buddhistic koan that instantly burned itself into me as a very sage thing to always keep in consideration.

A koan is small story but one who's point to trigger a realization in it's reader.  As such, they are generally puzzles that require one's own contemplation to figure out and are usually of a nature that when explained, they lose their value.  Sometimes longer, but usually short and to the point, the koan would tell of something that in and of itself didn't mean much until you looked deeper into the story to find that there's a hidden message in it and once the revelation of this message is achieved, the koan's purpose is fulfilled.  It's genius.  And fascinating.  And exciting to know that there are such creative minds that can not only observe the existence of the intangible mindscapes of others, but also play with that mindscape to help craft roads to enlightening states.

In a way, by attempting to use this koan as an analogy or metaphor for the question I wonder about our society, I'm doing those who've never heard of the koan the disservice of ruining and tainting the moment of "Ah HAH!" that comes when they realize it's lesson.  For that, I'm sorry. For everyone else who's crying out that I'm butchering the koan, you are right.  For that, I'm sorry as well.

Here goes,

To the child, The grass is green, The flowers are red
To the student, The grass is not green, The flowers are not red
To the master, The grass is green, The flowers are red

I'd like to apply this koan to what I see a question we should be asking ourselves as a society, but are not.  In the state of our culture and our closeness to our icons, we have dehumanized the notion of icon so much that it's inherently self-destructive.  

OOOOH!  What if instead of writing this out all boring like, the approach was instead something about How a koan can help us understand the state of our pop-culture.  Using reference to the Bill Cosby thing