koan

• kōan

From Japanese 公案 (kōan), which was from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkoʊ.ɑn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

koan (plural koans)

1. (Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable or parable, 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^[2], →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"?

2. 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.

3. 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]

• KAON, Kano, Kona, NKAO, kano, kaon

From Middle Breton coan, from Proto-Brythonic [Term?], from Latin cēna.^[1] Cognate with Cornish kon and Welsh cwyn (“dinner, supper”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwãːn/

koan f (plural koanioù)

1. dinner, supper

Borrowed from Japanese 公案 (kōan), from Literary Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, literally “public case”).

• IPA^(key): /ko.an/

• Audio (France (Agen)):

  (file)

koan m (invariable)

1. koan

• “koan”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• kaon

• kóan

From English koan, from Japanese 公案 (kōan), from Literary Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn) (literally, "public case").

• IPA^(key): [ˈkoːɒn]
• Hyphenation: ko‧an
• Rhymes: -ɒn

koan (plural koanok)

1. koan

koan (nominative plural koans)

1. shell, seashell

• koanaf (“shellfish”)

koan

1. alternative form of cooan

• 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