Yes, that's more or less how I think of koans too. (There's also the fact that in the tradition that originated them, koans were given in the context of a perso

Yes, that's more or less how I think of koans too. (There's also the fact that in the tradition that originated them, koans were given in the context of a personal relationship between teacher and student. We missed that when we turned them into intellectual gimmicks.) But the point is that this metaprogramming business is not impossible to describe.