Within the Record of Linji, what later generations came to call “koans” appear as vivid records of Linji’s living encounters with students rather than as set riddles to be solved. These sharp exchanges, paradoxical statements, sudden shouts, and even physical gestures function as dynamic teaching devices meant to bypass discursive thought. Instead of building up doctrinal understanding, they aim to undercut it, cutting through reliance on scriptures, concepts, and fixed ideas. In this way, the text presents a style of instruction that points directly to Buddha-nature and to what Linji calls the “true person of no rank,” beyond all roles and categories.

These encounters work by disrupting ordinary patterns of thinking and attachment. When a student approaches with a question framed in conventional logic or religious expectation, Linji’s response often appears abrupt, illogical, or even shocking. Such responses are crafted to shatter dependence on intellectual reasoning and to expose the futility of clinging to words and phrases. The very jolt of the exchange can reveal the student’s own present-moment awareness, turning attention away from external authorities and toward the mind as it actually is.

At the same time, these proto-koans serve as tests of realization. How a student responds in the heat of an encounter shows whether understanding is merely conceptual or has ripened into genuine insight. Linji’s unpredictable replies—whether a shout, a blow, or a seemingly offhand remark—probe the depth and stability of the student’s awakening. The Record thus portrays koan-like dialogues as both mirror and measure: they reflect the student’s state and measure the degree of freedom from attachment and dualistic thinking.

Finally, these episodes embody an awakened way of acting that later Rinzai tradition would formalize into systematic koan practice. In the Record, they are not abstract cases for detached study but the living activity of a teacher who refuses to let students rely on anything, even his own words. By relentlessly challenging attachment to Buddha, Dharma, practice, and attainment, Linji’s use of such encounters trains students in radical non-dependence. The text thereby preserves the raw, spontaneous style that later became the foundation for structured koan work, while itself presenting these exchanges as immediate occasions for sudden awakening.