Zen Buddhists use Koans as a kind of fast track method of attaining enlightenment.
In the monastery, the students are given progressively more difficult Koans to solve until the head monk decides they have attained enlightenment.
Actually, the Koans are rather non-sensical and the more non-sensical the answer, the more likely the head monk will approve, otherwise he is liable to thwack the student with a stick!
There are many true stories around this.
One famous story relates a famous monk who kept getting beaten for giving the incorrect answer. Eventually, he left the monastery in disgust and became enlightened through his own efforts.
He then returned to the monastery and gave the head monk a good clip round the ear-hole!
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