Abstract:Koans are mysterious stories used to teach Zen Buddhism for over a thousand years. The use of paradox in koans differs from the approach to paradox found throughout much writing about public administration. Koan practice and its central principle of nonduality suggest that apparently paradoxical objects are dynamically interconnected. This paper examines a nondualistic view of paradox through the analysis of koans and koan study. I use the term "open-ended tangled hierarchies" to describe one model of paradox … Show more
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.