Zen - koans

To work on a koan necessitates a sincere and enduring eagerness to solve it, but also - and here comes the twist, and one of the many paradoxes in which Zen abounds - you must face it without thinking about it. This point is stressed in the unbending effort to force the student beyond the eternally dualistic and dialectic pattern of ordinary thinking. Again and again it is emphasized that one cannot take hold of the true merely by abandoning the false, nor can one reach peace of mind or any final "answer" by argument or logic.

- NANCY WILSON ROSS, THE WORLD OF ZEN