I have been using display-dhammapada for some time now but I have always wanted a similar program for zen koans.

I came across a perl module on CPAN , “Zen Koans” and it was a nice start.

From there I added 2 more koan collections, The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Record, and wrote a wrapper script for these collections.

The wrapper script, “zen” has several options including printing to the terminal (similar to fortune or display-dhammapada), formatting the output to html, to be included in a web page, and printing the output to ~/koan.html to be viewed in firefox (or other browser).

For an example of the script on a web page see : tenach’s blog (thank you tenach for putting this up).

When printing to ~/koan.html , there are several themes.

To use these koans, you will need to download zen-koans.tar.gz
md5sum sha1sum.

Assuming you have downloaded zen-koans.tar.gz to ~/Downloads, you can either extract the file with a graphical tool (Archive Manager) or the command line.

cd ~/Downloads
tar xzvf zen-koans.tar.gz

Detailed instructions, and a description of the options, are included in the README.

gedit ~/Downloads/Zen-Koans/README

To install on Ubuntu (Instructions for Fedora are in the README):

cd ~/Downloads

#copy the perl modules
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1
sudo cp -R Zen-Koans/Zen /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1

#copy the images
sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/images
sudo cp Zen-Koans/images/* /usr/local/share/images

#copy the wrapper script
sudo cp Zen-Koans/bin/zen /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/zen

To try out the application try:

zen -ab && firefox ~/koan.html

For additional options , help is available with the -h flag:

bodhi@maverick:~$ zen -h

This program prints a random koan form one of 3 collections
of koans :

Shaseki-shu (Collection of Stone and Sand) - Default
The Gateless Gate
The Blue Cliff Record

The Shaseki-shu koans are easiest to comprehend,
The Gateless Gate are intermediate,
and The Blue Cliff are most difficult.

The default behavior is to print to the terminal

usage: zen [options]

 -h | --help     : this (help) message.
 -c | --cliff    : Use the Blue Cliff Record.
 -g | --gate     : Use the Gateless Gate.
 -a | --about    : Print information about the collection (first koan).
 -i | --include  : Prints the koan with (basic) html formatting.
 -b | --buddha   : Prints the koan to ~/koan.html , view with firefox.
 -f | --forest   : Same as -b, forest BG image.
 -s | --stones   : Same as -b, zen_stones BG image.
 -y | --yinyang  : Same as -b, yin-yang BG image.
 -d | --dark     : Prints to ~/koan.html , dark BG, no image.
 -l | --light    : Prints to ~/koan.html , light BG, no image.
 -o | --gold     : Prints to ~/koan.html , gold BG, no image.
 -r | --random   : Prints to ~/koan.html , random koan/theme.

I hope you enjoy them =)

Be careful, I am afraid they can be addicting.

If anyone would like to offer improvements or help package them into a ppa , assistance would be appreciated (pm me on the Ubuntu Forms). Otherwise I will try to package them into a ppa as time allows.