A-storytelling storytelling and time in koan texts

This article argues for a cognitive narrative approach to Chan/Zen storytelling and its notion of time, particularly within the koan literary context. It has been argued that human experience is inherently temporal and mediated by narratives. By contrast, the non-narrative dimension of experience constitutes the core of literary Chan, in which there is a peculiar philosophy of time and disruption of ordinary narrative experience. Two key points frame this discussion: Koan texts and practice advocate an experience which can be understood as ‘a-storytelling’ in Chan tradition; in turn, this ‘a-storytelling’ experience has a significant influence on Chan literature and its treatment of both time and narrative. Despite the inherent non-articulated nature, Chan literature presents innovative methods, as seen in koan texts, to articulate the non-articulated and overcome the ‘narrative contrivance’ of the mind. This argumentation is illustrated with detailed analyses of unusual Chan articulation in terms of the inverted temporal ordering, the function and significance of the ‘long pause’, and the language of immediacy. A cognitive narrative examination of Chan articulation shows that Chan manifests the indeterminacy of temporal progression and develops its own rhetoric of immediacy.