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Let that sink in for a while.
Any sufficiently advanced riddle is indistinguishable from gibberish.
Something that looks like a Koan, walks like a koan, quacks like a koan, but lacks... substance. It sounds meaningful at first, but after you think a moment, instead of getting some rush of insight, you realize that it is nothing more than nonsense, or just a joke dressed up in profundity's hand-me-downs. If confronted about it, the original speaker gives you an aggrieved expression and mutters What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
Usually done for comedy value, but all too often a result of genuine pretensions on the part of the writers. Of course, some would argue that all koans are Ice Cream Koans, but then again others would argue that all Ice Cream Koans are genuine Koans. It's most likely a difference in intent (and/or pretension) that distinguishes the two.
If done savvily enough, is indeed a form of Truth In Television — the point of a Zen koan (literally "Public Case", a story), is to show that contradiction is actually a delusion, and help the student let go of the mental habit of arranging things into dichotomies (because both extremes, despite their apparent contradiction, are actually one thing).
Taken to the extreme (and stretched out), this becomes a full-fledged Word Salad Philosophy.
See also Chance The Gardener, a frequent source of these. Compare and contrast Shaggy Frog Story.
Examples:
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Real Life
Comic Books
- Wondermark combines this with metaphorgotten:
"God, with a sword, can make a man a king. But a king, with a sword, can only make a man a knight. A knight, with a sword, can make a man a corpse. So... I kind of forgot where I was going there."
- The comic "The Warrior" (as reviewed by Spoony) is practically MADE of these...
- In one story, Reggie Mantle of Archie Comics fancies himself a martial arts expert and walks around town alternating bogus "moves" with pseudo-profound sayings along the lines of "As the grasshopper drinks of the morning dew, so is adversity pondered in the dungeons of Caliban," and "As broccoli on the dinner plate of life, so is the flower of transgression."
Film
- The increasingly trite sayings given by The Sphinx in Mystery Men, which often involve little more than rearranging the words in a given question asked him. For example, when Mr. Furious asks "Why am I balancing a tack hammer on my head?", the Sphinx answers "When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack."
- Spice World includes this transparently nonsensical saying:
"When the rabbit of chaos is pursued by the ferret of disorder through the fields of anarchy, it is time to hang your pants on the line of darkness. Whether they are clean or not."
- Mu Shu Fasa in Kung Pow deliberately baffles the Chosen One with a Koan.
Mu Shu Fasa: The answer you seek lies in the stars above.
Mu Shu Fasa: Of course you don't, I'm speaking in riddles. That's kind of the point. Like, a clue that will later make you go "Oh that's what he meant! Stars Above!"
- and let's not forget this gem spoken by Master Tang as he warns a student not to fight Master Pain:
Master Tang: NO! he will beat you like a small dog. Let your anger be, as a monkey in a pinata, hiding with the candy, hoping the kids don't break through with the stick.
- In The Gamers 2, the monk spouts this winner:
Monk: He who stumbles around in darkness with a stick is blind. But he who... sticks out in darkness... is... fluorescence!
DM: ...Lose 50 experience.
Literature
- Supposedly a zen koan, this exchange from the Halo EU novel Ghosts of Onyx:
Halsey: LIFE IS THE PATH
Endless Summer: CAN THE PATH BE SEE?
Halsey: OBSERVE THE PATH AND YOU ARE FAR FROM IT
Endless Summer: WITHOUT OBSERVATION HOW CAN ONE KNOW THEY ARE ON THE PATH
Halsey: THE PATH CANNOT BE SEEN, NOR CAN IT BE UNSEEN. PERCEPTION IS DELUSION; ABSTRACTION IS NONSENSICAL. YOUR PATH IS FREEDOM. NAME IT AND IT VANISHES
- Spoofed in the Discworld novel Thief of Time:
In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
- That other wiki-quote
 links the fish to I.C.T.H.O.S. which is a symbol of Christianity.
- Lu-Tze's way, the Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite, is entirely composed of mundane, common-sense sayings such as "There is no time like the present". One could argue the normally irreverent Lu-Tze treats these as deeply profound to make a point.
- The passwords for the secret society in Guards! Guards! are meaningless phrases that the society thought sounded wise, like "The significant owl hoots in the night" and "Yet verily the rose is within the thorn."
- Also the scene in Mort where Princess Keli consults Cutwell and they decide to try the Discworld equivalent of I Ching. They get no information at all from "at evening the mollusc is silent among the almond blossom," and Cutwell concludes it probably lost something in translation.
- Hark ye unto the wise words of Ford Prefect: "Life is like a grapefruit. It's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have a half a one for breakfast."
- And don't forget that "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
- In Discordianism, the "postmodern religion" often referenced by The Illuminatus! Trilogy, the answer to every "deep" question is always "Five tons of flax."
- The Discordians got this from a real Zen koan, where one of several accepted answers to "What is the Buddha?" is "Three pounds of flax".
- A large amount of Discordian wisdom looks like an Ice Cream Koan. So do a lot of Discordian jokes. And if you're trying to figure out if a particular Discordian koan is a joke or wisdom, you're doing it wrong.
- Even if you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong.
- In fact, Discordians deliberately use Ice Cream Koans to gum up their own and other people's brains. These are referred to in the Principia Discordia as "Mondos".
- What is the difference between an Iced Cream Koan, a Zen Koan, and a joke? If you need to ask, no answer will satisfy you (fnord).
- In a dialogue in Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, Achilles has taken up the art of translating Koans into string sculptures, which could then be used to determine if the koan is real—by spiritual means. Tortoise uses a string to make a pattern that, translated into words, makes a koan telling how the art of turning Koans into string came to be. This koan describes how to make the first koan string ever made; that string turns out to be the string Tortoise made—plus one knot at the end. The previous koan telling the story ended with a standard "the disciple was enlightened" pattern—but a knot is what "not" translates to...
- In The Game of Sunken Places by M.T. Anderson, the alien Speculant habitually speaks this way, which one of the boy protagonists treats as a contest: "When the Time of Naming arrives, then shall the unnamed and unnameable be called by its True Name." "I'll bet it has a name, and you just can't remember it, you sly devil." "The Unnameable has no name. Truth cannot be concealed behind Fiction. The Casket of Deliverance has found the Pearl of Wisdom lacking, and the Bone of No Sight shall, in the latter-" "Okay," said Gregory. "You win." The Speculant waited. "Really," said Gregory. "Ten nothing. Your game."
- The phrases of the Zensunni sect from Dune are said to intended to be Ice Cream Koans, similar to Zen as mentioned above. The difference is that they are intended to get the listener to recognize nonsense and obfuscation, regardless of how logically-constructed and reasonable it may appear.
- In The Dresden Files novel "Dead Beat", wacky Medical Examiner Butters gets stuck riding in a car Dresden's magic frizzled into repeating obnoxiously, "The door is ajar." When Dresden apologizes, Butters claims it was actually quite peaceful, Zen almost.
Butters: "Time is a River. Life is a Journey. The Door is a Jar."
- "Let things have been as they have been, nonetheless they've been somehow; so far it has never been that things would be nohow." - Josef Švejk from Jaroslav Hašek's The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War meantions a man he knew, who said this before court.
Live Action TV
Music
- Tom Lehrer: "Life is like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
- Nickelback's "If Today Was Your Last Day" is made up entirely of these. "Against the grain should be a way of liiife/What's worth the price is always worth the fight", etc.
- To be fair, 99% of song lyrics are like that...
- System of a Down's "Aerials" is also composed of these. "Life is a waterfall/ We drink from the river/ then we turn around and put up our walls"
Radio
- The following joke from A Prairie Home Companion. You're supposed to get it easily.
- The sign-off phrase of Im Sorry I Havent A Clue is always a variation of this concerning Time, Eternity, Fate and Destiny. The Other Wiki gives us:
"And so, as the hunter of time blasts the moose of eternity, and the dairy counter worker of fate sighs and grabs her mop, I notice it's the end of the show"; and
"And so, as the loose-bowelled pigeon of time swoops low over the unsuspecting tourist of destiny, and the flatulent skunk of fate wanders into the air-conditioning system of eternity, I notice it's the end of the show"
Tabletop RPG
- Dungeons And Dragons module OA 5 Mad Monkey vs. Dragon Claw, the character Mad Monkey is given a whole page of sayings of a type called "fortune cookie philosophy". One example is "The goose may fly, the fox may stalk, but only the pig hunts for truffles with his nose."
Video Games
- In Metal Gear Solid 2, a running gag is that Otacon can't understand proverbs. While the proverbs are legit, his rambling explanations of the meanings vary from wildly incorrect to technically correct but with the wrongest possible justification. This is a subversion of Mei Ling's conversations with Snake in the first game, where she would often quote Chinese proverbs and explain them. In fact, if you save your game enough times and hear enough of Otacon's proverbs, Mei Ling actually shows up to deliver a proverb properly and scolds Otacon for it.
Snake: What do pre-ripped jeans have to do with the natural order of things?
- In Monkey Island 2, Herman Toothrot asks Guybrush "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, what color is the tree?" After guessing about forty different colors, Guybrush correctly guesses "All colors":
Herman: Exactly. Now, what has this experience taught you?
Herman: I'm very impressed! It takes most people years to reach this point.
- Xaero from Quake III Arena spoke almost entirely in Ice Cream Koans.
- The Like Likes in The Legend Of Zelda are supposedly named for the fictitious proverb "Shield Eaters and World Leaders have many likes alike."
- Doc Louis is a master of these on a good day.
Doc Louis: "Y'see, a comeback is like a yo-yo. You goin' down, but you're comin' right back up! And then you may end up walkin' the dog."
- Cernd from Baldurs Gate II verges perilously close to this trope sometimes...and sometimes he dives right in.
- The creators of Creatures hid this gem on the CD:
"Seagulls cannot lick their own necks. This rarely seems to impede them."
Webcomics
- Subverted in the Furmentation page http://xodin.comicgenesis.com/d/20030813.html.
- Order of the Stick got one of these. Roy's father returns from the grave to tell him, "When goat turns red strikes true." After a misinterpretation or two, we find out that it actually meant that when Nale (who has a goatee) turns his back on the group, Haley (who has red hair) would roll a natural twenty and be able to shoot him from an otherwise unrealistic distance. It was... different.
- This is the entire schtick of Cho from No Need For Bushido. To wit.
Cho: I'm reminded of a wise saying I once heard about nomadic palm trees...
Cho: The loaf of bread that tries to twist its fate is not a loaf at all, but is, in fact, a pretzel.
Cho: ...and the greatest of these it the ostrich. (actually, we only got the end of that one, but considering the look on the inn hostess' face, we can assume it was a doozy)
- Ozy And Millie occasionally makes Zen jokes using Ice Cream Koans, like showing a Zen map ("Go one place and not another") or a Zen board game ("It's your turn to move by not moving").
- X-ing by not X-ing is a Running Gag in the comic. It's taken to even higher levels of absurdity when Llewellyn runs for president on the Zen Party ticket, and declares that he's running by not running. Ozy asks him why he's running, and he says he's running because he's not not running, and thus that he's not not running by not not not running.
- This strip shows Ozy using an Ice Cream Koan to win a game. Maybe.
- In Arthur King Of Time And Space's space arc, Arthur tells a crewman that in life, "when one door closes, another opens." The crewman later repeats the saying as "Life is an airlock."
- From Schlock Mercenary:
"If a coffee machine passes a baseball bat in the forest, and the only one to see it is a mime, what does he tell the police?"
- One Irregular Webcomic demonstrates that you should remember that a koan is not a cone.
- "Crying is like puking for the soul."
- This actually makes a whole lot of sense.
- xkcd lampshades it in the Alt Text.
Web Original
Western Animation
- In Star Wars Clone Wars, Jedi Master Luminara Unduli has a monologue during Bariss Ofee's lightsaber construction ceremony. Mostly she just rearranges the same six words over and over:
Luminara Unduli: The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force. The Force is the blade of the heart. All are intertwined: the crystal, the blade, the Jedi. You are one.
- The Zen Big Guy from The Mighty Ducks cartoon, Grin, would state that pain is an illusion, but quickly be forced to admit that it's an illusion that really really hurts.
- Hue of Avatar The Last Airbender made one by mutating an actual Koan he used on his last appearance:
Hue: Pants are an illusion, and so is death.
Zuko-as-Iroh: Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self reveal itself.
Zuko: Ugh, even when I'm talking for him I can't figure out what he means.
- Subverted in The Secret Show. In the episode "The Trousers of Doom", the saying "Is not the cheesecake still a cheesecake after it has been consumed by the ox?" sounds like an Ice Cream Koan, but actually has a meaning — one which ends up saving the day.
- In The Simpsons episode "Dead Putting Society" Lisa tries an old koan on him: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Bart stares at his hand and then slaps his fingers against his palm. "No, Bart, it's an ancient riddle with no answer," Lisa tells him. "Listen closely, Sis," Bart says, doing it again.
- In Bill Plympton's "The Tune", The Wise One (sometimes know as Gus) speaks entirely in phrases like "Seek not the path to enlightenment, but rather the enlightenment of the path".
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