Life Itseslf is a Koan – 08.19.10

Student Question: What is a koan?

“A koan is a voluntary way of putting your mind under pressure,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But life itself is a koan. And it’s because people can’t solve the riddle of their own life that they enter into a spiritual path. And we sit down and meditate and think about it. And, in the effort to solve that riddle, we will break through into our own liberation. But, no one can escape the fact that they are in an incoherent level of life when they’re in the ego, and they find themselves doing things they don’t really want to do, and they haven’t a clue why they’re doing it. . . . And so that riddle—if you become focused on it enough—will cause you to reach such a level of perplexity and frustration, that you’ll focus on solving it, and there will be a breakthrough to higher consciousness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.