The koan by Cohen

Koans are an element of Zen Buddhism. They are little ideas, often no more than a line, that don't particularly make sense.

Some examples of common koans are, "What did your face look like before your ancestors were born?" and "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."

A student training in a Zen monastery will receive a koan from a teacher and will think about it. When he feels he understands it, he will present his interpretation to the teacher. The teacher will generally tell him that he is wrong and send him to think some more. The point is not to figure out the koan so much as it is to work through the meaning, at length, until the thinking leads the seeker to a higher level of understanding.

In twelfth grade, my English teacher assigned an open-ended research project called, "Follow Your Bliss." I decided to write about koans.

I shared this decision with another teacher, who replied enthusiastically, "Leonard Cohen?" I said no, Zen koans, little realizing at the time that she was slightly right.

Over the next few weeks I read a lot about koans, giving very few of them the serious attention they deserved. At the end of the project, I determined that my favorite of all the koans I had read was a modern, Western koan I had encountered online.

It was the koan by Cohen.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

~ "Anthem," by Leonard Cohen

The Cohen koan is particularly well-suited to chanoyu. A central tenet of chanoyu is the appreciation of imperfection. Each meeting and event is irreplaceable, specifically because of its mistakes. A perfect tea performed with robotic attention to detail would have no errors, but also no soul. Our imperfections are what allow us to be appropriate vessels of light.