I really enjoy koans of all kinds. There are the many collections of classic Zen koans, such as The Gateless Gate; I always have one volume of those working and simply read one or two a day for entertainment, like Aesop’s Fables. Then there’s the koan I’m currently sitting/running with, that latest in a series of mental worry beads courtesy of one of my Zen teachers. And then the everyday koans which I am learning to be more sensitive to; the many people, familiar and strange, who unconsciously present us with a teaching as we simply go about our business – an offhand comment (“Goodness! Where did all this wind come from?”), a passing, seemingly banal remark we think we’ve heard a million times, until we suddenly hear it a different way (“Two o’clock already! Where does the time go?”). And for runners, there’s one of my favorites, usually asked of us by someone who’s not a runner: “How long is that marathon?” On one level we like to make fun of people who ask this, because we know all marathons are a uniform length and their question implies they don’t know. But on another level, it’s well worth more consideration. Marathoners might find a lot to contemplate when standing at the start line of their race if they ask themselves, “How long is this marathon?”
