Sanzen (参禅), aka nisshitsu (入室), means going to a Zen Master for instruction. In the Rinzai school , it has the same meaning as dokusan, which is specifically a private interview between student and master, often centering around the student's grasp of an assigned koan. If the master rings a bell to dismiss the student, this means the student's understanding is not right and that their work with the koan must continue.
From a talk by Yasutani Roshi given in 1961 and translated by Philip Kapleau Roshi in The Three Pillars of Zen:
The great merit of koans, which range over the vast area of the Mahayana teachings, is that they compel us, in ingenious and often dramatic fashion, to learn these doctrines not simply with our head, but with our whole being, refusing to permit us to sit back and endlessly theorize about them in the abstract.
What Heinrich Zimmer says about certain types of meditation is especially true about koans, the spirit of which must be demonstrated before the Roshi, and not merely explained. "Knowledge is the reward of action... for it is by doing things that one becomes transformed. Executing a symbolical gesture, actually living through, to the very limit, a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role. Suffering its consequences, one fathoms and exhausts its contents..."
It must not be supposed, however, that one reaches this point easily, or without a generous measure of frustration or even desperation. In his Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (p 101), contemporary master Shibayana quotes his teacher on the function of the koan:
"Suppose here is a completely blind man who trudges along leaning on his stick and depending on his intuition. The role of the koan is to mercilessly take the stick away from him and to push him down after turning him around. Now the blind man has lost his sole support and intuition and will not know where to go or how to proceed. He will be thrown into the abyss of despair. In this same way, the koan will mercilessly take away all our intellect and knowledge. In short, the role of the koan is not to lead us to satori easily, but on the contrary, to make us lose our way, and drive us to despair."
The complete solution of a koan involves the movement of the mind from a state of ignorance (delusion) to the vibrant inner awareness of living truth. This implies the emergence into the field of consciousness of the immaculate Bodhi-mind, which is the reverse of the mind of delusion. The determination to struggle with a koan in the first place is generated by faith in the reality of the Bodhi-mind, the struggle itself being the effort of this Mind to cast off the shackles of ignorance, and come to its own Self-knowledge.
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