A Zen master was training his student, he pulled out a short stick and said 'If you call this a short stick you deny its nature. And if you do not call it that you overlook the fact.' What should you call the stick? Let's hear some of your theorys and please share some koans that you have come accross (lets try to keep 'One hand clapping' out of here though Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!). Remember that the koans are meant to be rather unanswerable and are actualy meditation techniques employing the idea that if you keep your mind intensely concentrated, focusing on one complex process of thought discrimination you can accheive a state of temporary perfect mental queitness, rather than that the focus is finding the answere to the question itself. So there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answeres in one sense.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, doe sit make a sound? Is that a Koan? also you might like this http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html
uh, I don't know, did a Zen Monk come up with it? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ok, I'll take a crack at the one I provided: You 'should' call it nothing to be correct, it exists and there's not much more to it. The ideas of 'stick' and 'short' are words invented by people. If you call it short you are making an arbitrary discrimination on the lenght of the object, however lenght is very, very realtive. So what is the sticks length relative to? Other sticks? Other sticks are not pertinent to the nature of the particular perceived stick outside of our conceptual mind that recognises the wooden thing as a 'stick' and compares it to other wooden things as being 'longer sticks'. You can call the short stick neither short or anything else without denying it's nature, the 'fact of the shortness of the stick' is an arbitrary discrimination and is not relevant to the nature of the object itself.... FYI Rereading that made me laugh my ass off, so it stays.
Rules are also made by men... (Whack! Exsto gets whacked with the stick. The student ALWAYS gets whacked with the stick.) My fave Koan was the one that went like this: The student asked the master, "Master, can dogs know Zen?" And the master said, "woof".
They are sometimes used like that yes. But koans contain truths (often on many levels). The task is to find them. Usually that task involves resolving apparent contradictions (one hand clapping etc) and thus understanding the duality of existence and the necessary duality of language and the relativity of subject/object distinctions (as Exto suggests). They are lessons, clues if you like, not mantras. They are not designed to confuse, they are designed to illustrate confusion.
You are very correct Canute, and infact what I say doesn't disagree with what you say. ''rather than that the focus is finding the answere to the question itself.'' What I mean is that the focus is not to find the correct concrete answere to the question as it is posed, you cannot find such an answere and this is the point, you are meant to come to an understanding of the profundity of the nature of the things and the discriminatory path leading to the words of the teachings. Which is pretty much as you say. However when acchieving such understanding, you can only grasp the deepest implications of the knowledge in the deepest of meditative states and it is this state, when nurtured, that eventualy leads one to enlightenment. So the real purpouse is to acceive the understanding of the duality of the question and consequently of life, when done with the greatest concentration and wisdom it leads one to the meditative state. Ultimately the meditative state is the goal with the excercise. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself? If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind.
lol! This koan is pretty easy but the one I have trouble with is the one hand clapping. would someone be nice enough to explain this matter a bit?
I always thought it was a reference to cooperation. Whether between more than one person, or between the different "parts" of who you are. *shrug*
I think some would say that one hand clapping, is a question on the emptiness of existence. The question is where does the sound of clapping exist? Does it come from the one hand or the other? Is it the nature of the air that makes the sound, or is it the nature of the matter of your hand? Is the sound realy only a mental conception caused by signals from your ear? Obviously the sound is result of a chain of causes and effects, the one hand strikes the other the air conveys the vibration which the ear perceives and reports to the brain which subsequently decides the source and nature of the sound. Why then do we perceive the sound as being inherently existent when clearly it is not existent from it's own side at any point? Are we ourselves and the world arround us possibly not inherently existent? Are we ourselves perhaps merely a result of causes and effects? What then is truely permanent and how can it be realized? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I feel that the importance of Koans is not the answer, but the process of thinking that is required to reach an answer (of which there are many). The answer doesn't matter, what matters is the question. The one hand clapping is all that Exsto says and a lot more. For instance it is also prompting you to consider the whole issue of the duality and relativity of our conceptions and perceptions. The sound of one clapping is obviously silence, but to give this perfectly correct answer is miss the point of the question. Edit: On reflection 'silence' is precisely the right answer to the question. The point is to see the significance of the answer. As always it depends how you look at it, (which is also the point of the question).
How true! Came across this koan that explains that concept perfectly. "Kotei Strikes a Monk — A student of Kassai came to visit Kotei and bowed. Kotei immediately struck the monk. The monk said, "I came especially to see you and paid homage to you with a bow. Why do you strike me?" Kotei struck the monk again and chased him from the monastery. The monk returned to his teacher, Kassai, and told the story. "Do you understand or not?" asked Kassai. "No, I don't," answered the monk. "Fortunately, you do not understand," Kassai said. "If you did, I would be dumbfounded." Another blatant zen case of blaming the victim! Dear Canute: I liked your answer, but don't feel it went far enough to explain what is meant by what is the sound of one hand clapping. While it is true there is duality to all things, all things have duality and those things, in turn, have duality. I think of paintings and statues of those lovely mystical Gods and Goddesses who have many arms and hands to explain this concept. The male God (particle) and the female Goddess (wave) each have a side that is male and female. So we take sound. It is both particle and wave. Yes, those must combine to gain unity. But what is sound's partner? If we see sound in terms of being female, its male counterpart would be light which also has a wave and particle nature. So if we see the uniting of separateness to an ultimate unity, we have the sound of the universe. The sound we can hear only when we know the One. NEMESIS
Fair enough. Your approach isn't mine because I'm me and you're you, but at least they're both approaches, and it wouldn't make much sense to say that one is more or less right. I suppose that there are as many interpretations as there are people doing the interpreting. (Which isn't to say that the truth of those interpretions are arbitrary or relative). Ultimately my opinion would be that a good koan is an all purpose tool, one which each person is bound to use differently. Umm. Or perhaps a key with no clue as to which door it unlocks. I'm not sure why there's quite so much whacking of students with sticks in Buddhism, except that it's very funny. I suspect that it may be to make the educational point that although Buddhist teaching is profoundly self-contradictory and sometimes apparently senseless it's not a game, or some form of vocational training, and it's teachers really do care that their students think it through and pay more attention to getting it right than they would to their geography homework. You don't forget a whack on the head, and you're bound to keep wondering why you got it. That's my only guess.
Dear Canute: You're quite correct and I wasn't doing this to nitpick, but to expand on a thought. You see, I had an epiphany about this particular subject after an extremely wondrous meditation. I practice Kundalini yoga and these thoughts just sort of explode in your head. Sorry if I came across in any other way other than discussing this subject with you. As concerns whacking students with sticks, I read, "In the Light of Truth" by Abd-Ru-Shin. I'm paraphrasing, but basically it said that if someone slaps you in your face to wake you up, you should thank him and not curse him. Sat Nam!
