Introduction to Forthcoming Book

Introduction To "The Answer To All Koans"

by John Tischer and Robert Arnold Burghardt

"It's either Zen, or it's not."

To explain what this volume is, is to describe

how it came about. Myself and my dear friend,

Robert Arnold Burghardt, have known each

other since our days in college. After college,

we were aware of the other's existence, but 

the times we were in the same place were 

infrequent. Our lives pilgrimages took us in

different but parallel directions. We were both

on a journey of awakening. Arn's tool was, in

the main, Indian Classical Music, whereas mine

was Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance

of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, the renown

master that facilitated Tibetan Buddhism's 

integration into Western society and culture.

When we reconnected via Skype several years 

ago, we discovered that we had grown more

aware in complementary ways through

our life paths, our spiritual journeys; the reason

being our intent was the same: to find out what

the F... was really going on at all...what was this

thing called life, really?

So, when we began to download our lives journeys

to each other, the experience was a natural 

organic process....like musicians improvising...

like theatrical improvisation. It wasn't telling each

other our stories. It was like unfolding a map of

observations, anecdotes, jokes, tropes, parables.

It wasn't like two tourists showing each other photos

of where they had been. It was spilling the guts of

our experience to each other with the flavor of the

humor and wit and insight we had with each other

from the moment we first met. The fact that we
were both, in essence, heirs of Buddha meant we
had a  common language where we discovered
we suddenly had a larger common vocabulary
whereby to paint our insights to each other. 

We began to come up with material; stories I would

write inspired by our mutual insight, memories of
the path that we shared, bon motes, aphorisms,
koans, tropes, all triggered by this process of
mining our life experiences. An insight we groked
on the spot  would become the inspiration for a
poem. Over a  couple of years we accumulated
this material because we were both inspired by
what was manifesting as a result of this process
of re-knowing each other.

At some point, Arn said to me: "Hey, we've got a lot

of interesting material here...enough for a book!"

The next question was, what to do with it? Months

ensued of deliberation, with some discussion, about

how the material should be organized....how many

categories of types of material we had...formats and

such...which process seemed inevitable, but never

got anywhere. 

Then, in conversation, the solution came like a 

diamond bullet between the eyes. There was no 

need to "organize" the material. The way it
manifest; its organic, natural, chaotic, spontaneous
appearance was its form. Like wabi-sabi, there was
no need to organize nature to make it more
beautiful. It didn't have to make sense, the way
scientists split the atom hoping to discover the
true universe. If it raised  questions, if it didn't leave
a trail of bread crumbs to follow, that didn't diminish
it's value. This is not an orderly, progressive, literary
journey. This is more  akin to the travelogues,
(albeit internal), of Issa and  Basho, who would
traverse the country, relating sights and
experiences and writing poems about them
as they went along.

This is the driving of the year nail, the golden spike

that connects the East and the West, the Beat way;

spontaneous non-structure coming out of the
mouths of two old babes