| Core Concept |
| A zen word puzzle with no has no logical solution.
Intended to provoke an intuitive leap towards enlightenment.
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| My favourite koan |
| Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice.
His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb.
From under the tree another person asks him: "What is Zen?"
If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails.
If he tries to answer he falls to his death.
Now what should he do?
(paraphrased from an original koan by Kyogen) |
| Meaning |
| Why is the man in such a predicament? Why doesn't the other care?
Neither matters.
At issue is the cost of answering the question - worth paying?
Or even more fundamental: can an answer be spoken, or is silence the most appropriate answer? |
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| Logic |
| Zen illustrates multi-valued logic: there are more answers than true or false.
Concept will be familiar to computer scientists as fuzzy logic |
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