Koans by their very nature are all paradoxical and meant to break the logical mind and to send it into enlightenment thereby simply because enlightenment is beyond standard logic because it is a direct experience that cannot be thought about or talked about or even written about perfectly successfully even by the most enlightened of people.
So when, in my early 20s I was given the following Koan that I had never heard of before by one of my teachers, my reaction was: "Well. I'll have to see it to believe it" And the reaction of my teacher was: "If you were not skeptical this Koan would not be of use to you. For even though it is beyond logic and therefore might be considered Crazy Wisdom in nature, still it is true for you as well as many people your age and after". Still, I maintained my skepticism until I came to my 30s and 40s when I began to think, "Well. I didn't die by 25 like I thought I would in my early 20s. I survived already into my 30s and now 40s unlike many people I knew in my teens and 20s. So, maybe my teacher was prescient enough to know that I also was prescient and would grow into this wisdom and therefore become it. He must have known that I had a chance to become the fulness of this paradox. Here is the Koan:
"If you live to be 100 you will see 500
If you live to be 500 you will see 1000
If you live to be 1000 you will see 5000
If you live to be 5000 you will see 10,000."
So, now I'm 63 and I will be 100 in 2048. It doesn't seem that far away now. And after all I have seen I'm pretty confident that it will either apply to me or to many of you or both.
Maybe we all are transcendental men and women!
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