Me personally I like to sit and contemplate Koan riddles, really get into them and let my brain follow what ever path it wants along the riddle. A few of my favs are right here:
#1
BODHIDHARMA left his robe and bowl to his chosen successor; and
each patriarch thereafter handed it down to the monk that, in his
wisdom, he had chosen as the next successor. Gunin was the fifth
such Zen patriarch. One day he announced that his successor would
be he who wrote the best verse expressing the truth of their sect.
The learned chief monk of Gunin's monastery thereupon took brush
and ink, and wrote in elegant characters:
The body is a Bodhi-tree
The soul a shining mirror:
Polish it with study
Or dust will dull the image.
No other monk dared compete with the chief monk. But at twilight
Yeno, a lowly disciple who had been working in the kitchen, passed
through the hall where the poem was hanging. Having read it, he
picked up a brush that was lying nearby, and below the other poem
he wrote in his crude hand:
Bodhi is not a tree;
There is no shining mirror.
Since All begins with Nothing
Where can dust collect?
Later that night Gunin, the fifth patriarch, called Yeno to his
room. "I have read your poem," said he, "and have chosen you as my
successor. Here: take my robe and my bowl. But our chief monk and
the others will be jealous of you and may do you harm. Therefore I
want you to leave the monastery tohight, while the others are
asleep."
In the morning the chief monk learned the news, and immediately
rushed out, following the path Yeno had taken. At midday he
overtook him, and without a word tried to pull the robe and bowl
out of Yeno's hands.
Yeno put down the robe and the bowl on a rock by the path. "These
are only things which are symbols," he said to the monk. "If you
want the things so much, please take them."
The monk eagerly reached down and seized the objects. But he could
not budge them. They had become heavy as a mountain.
"Forgive me," he said at last, "I really want the teaching, not
the things. Will you teach me?"
Yeno replied, "Stop thinking this is mine and stop thinking this
is not mine. Then tell me, where are you? Tell me also: what did
your face look like, before your parents were born?"
#2
ONE WINDY day two monks were arguing about a flapping banner.
The first said, "I say the banner is moving, not the wind."
The second said, "I say the wind is moving, not the banner.'
A third monk passed by and said, "The wind is not moving. The
banner is not moving. Your minds are moving."
These are just my two favorite ones to sit and think on. Great way to really let your mind focus on a single point of meaning, while looking at it from different angles and from different levels of consciousness as you sit longer the problem becomes both more complex and strikingly simple. Hopefully you enjoy the Koans ^-^
