Oy. I just glanced through the last couple weeks of posts. Hence the lack of a loud sigh on this one before. So consider this the loud-sigh of the confirmedly anti-koan, the person who thinks that metaphor and other such non-expository modes of speech have aesthetic value only, and that if one cannot speak of an idea in clear language, well, one ought to keep silent about it. (I can see Wittgenstein glaring at me...)

Or: what's the point of rationalist koan* exactly?

* It also irks me like crazy to see people taking the Japanese word "koan" and sticking an s on the end to pluralize it. You don't do that in Japanese.