Author: Janwillem van de Wetering (Netherlands 1931)
Genre: Radio play
Production: NDR 1995
Director: Götz Naleppa
Sound: Lutz Pahl
Length: 73 min.

Contributors:
Hans Peter Hallwachs, Kumiko Tansho, Eric Vaessen, Dieter Mann, Max Volkert Martens, Klaus Piontek, Janwillem van de Wetering, Juanita van de Wetering, a.o.

Content:
A koan is the paradoxical riddle that the Buddhist master gives his disciple as a meditation task. And it was with a koan of the most intricate kind that the young Dutchman van de Wetering began his search for truth in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto almost fifty years ago - which can be read in the two books 'The Empty Mirror' and 'A Glimpse into Nothingness'. Today, de Wetering has a critical attitude towards organised Buddhism. Abuses in Eastern and Western monasteries have disillusioned him. This ambivalence of scepticism and fundamental affirmation of the Buddha doctrine characterises his radio play 'The Koan', published by Rowohlt-Verlag Hamburg in 1996, as well as his book 'The Pure Emptiness' from 1999.