A *koan* is a question or statement used in Zen practice to gently unsettle the grip of ordinary thinking. It is not meant to be answered in the usual way, but to be lived with, returned to, puzzled over—until the puzzle itself begins to dissolve.
Classic examples like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “Who am I?” are less about finding answers and more about meeting the question fully, without the need to resolve it.
Koans are not tricks or clever word games, though they can be playful. They are tools of transformation - sharp, subtle, and often unsettling. They invite the mind to go quiet not by force, but by exhaustion, as if reasoning itself simply bows out, leaving something deeper to step forward. Whether this leads to insight, peace, or simply a more intimate confusion depends on how one listens.
> In western minds this is equivalent to an oxymoron.
A *koan* and an *oxymoron* might look like they belong at the same quirky dinner party—both play with paradox, both disrupt ordinary thinking—but their aims and origins are worlds apart.
An oxymoron is a linguistic device: a deliberate pairing of contradictory words to create a jolt of meaning or irony — *bittersweet*, *open secret*, *civil war*. It operates in language, often humorously or poetically, and it *knows* it’s being clever. It’s a rhetorical wink.
A **koan**, by contrast, is a spiritual tool from Zen Buddhism. It presents an apparent contradiction — often more open-ended or surreal than an oxymoron — not to amuse or impress, but to destabilize logic and open the practitioner to a direct, intuitive insight. It doesn’t aim to be clever. It aims to be real—so real that language falls away.
In short: an oxymoron plays with words to stir the mind; a koan plays with the mind to still it. More directly a **koan is an oxymoron taken seriously**.
# See also - Skoba, Newspeak, Kashchenism and Oxymoron