Paradoxical challenges

Reflective processing is triggered by a discrepancy between expectations and perceptions. Paradoxes are ready made discrepancies.

In Buddhist meditation practice the kōan is a question or statement (often seemingly paradoxical in nature). A classic example is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

They are designed to generate perplexity ('great doubt') and stimulate transformative reflection ('enlightenment'). In terms of the reflective process, they invite us to question and re-examine our meaning schemas and their influence on our perceptions, memories and imagination.

Here are a few possible questions and statements to contemplate. They are not riddles or puzzles to solve. There's no trick answer. The aim is to get you to ask questions about your experiences and your understanding of yourself, of others and the world around you. Some of them are weird facts, some are questions and some may appear to be nonsense at first. If they trigger reflection, they have done their job.

• What is it that you see but don't see?

• What happens to the world when you are not observing it?

• The map is not the territory.

• You change your memories every time you recall them.

• This statement is meaningless.

• Stare at a word for long enough and you see it for what it really is.

• Nothing is true. Nothing is false.

• Everything is true. Everything is false.

• Past and future do not exist except inside your mind.

• So good, it's bad. So bad, it's good.

• An aubergine (eggplant) is a berry.

• There are no straight lines, only circles.

• What didn't happen is just as real as what did happen.

• What does it look like from the other side?

• Order needs chaos.

• The more things change, the more they stay the same.

• Good and bad do not exist outside your head.

• Where is the you that could have been?

• Where is the you that never was?

• No gain, no pain.

• Do you know what you don't know?

• We only become consciously aware of our choices a fraction of a second after we make them.

• When other people look through your eyes, what do they see?

• What you get is what you see.

• Everything is the same until it's different.

• What caused the Big Bang?

• Why can you never answer the question 'why?'?

• You are no longer the same person who started reading this statement.

• When you read this sentence again it will be different.

• You are not aware of all the things you are aware of.

• How do you become your own parent?

• That which has no name does not exist

• Not true is not false

• Fail successfully

• See more by not looking and hear more by not listening

• What you say is never what you mean

• What you hide from yourself, you reveal to others.

• Inevitability is not inevitable.

• The past is a story we create to explain our current state

• The future is a story we create to ease our discomfort with our current state