In Zen Buddhism, one method of spiritual enlightenment is the koan. A koan is a paradoxical statement that shatters accepted ways of thinking. A student goes to his master and is told a particular koan and then sent off to meditate upon it. One of the most famous koans is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Puzzled and perplexed, the student absents herself for hours or days or weeks and returns to the master in the hope of impressing home with her wisdom. It rarely works. Most often the student is sent away to meditate on the koan some more. The process is repeated, sometimes for years, before the student is judged to have experienced some kind of enlightenment from the meditation. An arduous task, to be sure, and radically different from our western understanding that a couple of college degrees and a few impressive books in your library is all that you need to be considered spiritually wise.

From my study of scripture, I believe that this Zen method may be closer to the method by which Jesus taught than our more traditional image of him lecturing to the disciples as they all sat entranced at his feet, furiously scribbling away at their notes in order that one day they could be famous authors of something called a gospel.

The idea of Jesus teaching in koans may be troubling to those who like their Christianity neat and tidy. I am sure it was particularly offensive to the Pharisees who had God all figured out. Certainly the most disturbing koan of all was not something Jesus said but something he did. The greatest koan would have been "Christ crucified." No one expected God to wind up dead! No one expected the messiah to hang out with the outcast and the unclean and then die a sinner's death! "Christ crucified" is still offending us and troubling us and upsetting us two thousand years later. We're still trying to figure out what that means. If the idea of a Christian koan is as intriguing to you as it is for me, then let me offer one more that you might spend some time...like the rest of your life...meditating upon. It is from Jesus, the greatest of teachers...not because of his degrees and intelligence, not because he was respected by the powerful and admired by the successful...but because he was a teacher who, as they say, practiced what he preached and what he preached, I believe, were illuminating stories and intriguing little koans. Here is the one for you to take today..."Whoever loses their life will find it." You've heard it before, of course. Hear it again and again and again. "Whoever loses their life will find it." Now go and learn what this means.