[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The flag koan is intended to knock you out of your normal state of awareness and jar you into looking at things from a different cognitive perspective. It’s not meant to brng about an intellectual realization but an actual physiological brain change. If it doesn’t work, that’s ok. Koans usually don’t truly work for anybody, even serious students of Zen. The flag koan doesn’t really work for me either. I understand the kind of angle it’s supposed to jar me into but it doesn’t really get me there. My realizations or “glimpses” or whatever have never really come from koans. The people who really “get” the “sound of one hand clapping” or why the question of whether a dog has a Buddha nature is answered with “Mu” are the exception rather than the rule. Zen doesn’t promise Enlightenment, only that zazen sometimes works for some people (it’s still a useful practice even if you don’t get enlightened, though. I do it myself).
[/QUOTE]
And that was really my only point (thank you for helping me make it, Diogenes). I did not mean to become the joke I have by injecting the “fortune-cookie nonsense” that the flag koan inspired in Mr. Ekers.
In early study, this koan caused the exact reaction it was meant to in me, and for someone like Mr. Ekers, who seeks answers, I figured this might be a good place to start.
As you and Malthus both point out though Diogenes, koans are less than effective in our society where respect for teachers and masters is not as profound as it is in Eastern cultures (for two reasons IMO, one is because they often behave in ways that prove they do not deserve the respect, and two because westerners are madly self-obsessed).
The concept of being “enlightened” is not one of absolutes Mr. Ekers. In as much as there are finite laws and rules that govern a goodly portion of the known universe, the ability of the mind to expand into and beyond its’ known borders or limitations is at the absolute heart of the search for enlightenment.
No one with any credibility at all claims supernatural powers or abilities exist post-enlightenment, but rather on the extreme end, claims of a sort of “hyper-control” of the body using the strength and depth of the mind are often proven (and often disproven too, because frankly, it doesn’t always work). The wood and water koan is an excellent illustration of this, however I will spare you that, lest I be further ridiculed.
The facts of enlightenment are plainly evident to those who seek them and are willing to accept the mind has more capacity and ability than previously conceptualized or understood, even outside of scientific circles. You wish to place the concept you have of enlightenment into a small sterile compartment where it is easily examined, probed and deconstructed. I submit to you that because of the variables that exist within the mind, not only from person to person, but within one mind, that this cannot be done.
The circumstances that lead to enlightenment for, say, Diogenes will be different than they are for me, and different again than they are for anyone seeking enlightenment. You cannot reproduce the circumstances that lead one person to enlightenment, and expect those same things to work on someone else.
They may work, yes, but they will likely not work consistently, which by itself is evidence that enlightenment is a physical state, reached sometimes by sitting zazen, sometimes by chewing peyote, and sometimes by simply falling asleep.