That sounds a lot like a post-facto apologist slant. Sure you can 'explain them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now. And for most folks, especially junior monks just starting out, they might sound wanky too.
> That sounds a lot like a post-facto apologist slant.
Uh, no. Lots of them definitely rely on knowing who the monks are, their reputations, and their relationships to one another. And other facts about the world in which they occur ("Three pounds of flax!"). One is not even going to get at the interesting parts of them without that. Lots will come off as gibberish or as confusing in ways that they are not intended to be without that context.
> Sure you can 'explain them' but everybody hears them where their mind is at now.
It's not about explaining them, it's about the coming-to-terms phase of reading from How to Read a Book. Even smart folks would probably have a bad time approaching a graduate-level math text book without a little context so they get where it's even starting from and understand the references and vocabulary that the book was written assuming the reader would already have.
I think they are supposed to be 'esoteric and wanky' for the beginner, like 'mu' and 'one hand clapping' - even for the eastern audience. The idea, if I understand it correctly, is to get your mind hung up on a solution until you either get frustrated, or find your way out of the conundrum.
I hope I didn't do any harm here. I was hoping to share some of what I thought was pretty mind bending.
Even for the first story in Gateless Gate it's probably intended that the reader know what "mu" means and the orthodox Zen Buddhist position on who/what does or does not have Buddha-nature—and WTF "buddha-nature" is—before tackling it. Those parts aren't supposed to be mysterious.
