'Croatian Philosophical Society (Hrvatsko filozofsko drustvo)'
Abstract
It is truly hard to take account of all distinctions abiding at the boundaries of East and West. To encompass their essentials, the differences constantly pulsing and stirring new astonishments in difficulties in comprehension and accepting the whole range of values to which we got accustomed and continually anticipate while encountering Far-East traditions of thinking and living – perhaps the best way to get insight into them is to penetrate the essence that keeps taking us by surprise relentlessly, challenging us with its novelty and undermining the roots of its own attitudes and views itself. With Zen-Buddhism we are almost immediately combining two key notions, two elementary words that have become self-explanatory in terms of their usage although they cannot be easily explained or presented in any form of discourse thinking – satori and koan. In the present article the effort has been made to explain those two key notions of Zen Buddhism, as well as to situate them in the context of philosophy of life that Zen Buddhism is nourishing
