Koan
//ˈkoʊ.ɑn// noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 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.
"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 paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution; used in Zen Buddhism to show the inadequacy of logical reasoning wordnet
- 3 A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment.
"Gibberish. Or else a koan that Achtfaden isn’t equipped to master, a transcendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of light."
- 4 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.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The Traveling Salesman Problem is a pertinent koan among computer scientists."
Etymology
From Japanese 公案 (kōan), which was from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.