When
in my early 20s – code for young and foolish –
it was very trendy to take an interest in Zen Buddhism.
Both the mercurial curious and blinkered zealous were lured
by the promise of enlightenment (satori) -- being at one
with the universe.
Among
the doctrinal methods and means employed to achieve enlightenment,
the Zen Koans held a particular fascination, since the answering
of them, especially the difficult ones, promised instant
enlightenment -- not to be confused with instant Karma.
Of
the 1,700 Koans, the most difficult and most widely known
is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Despite
my one-and-twenty status and hard-wired idealism, it struck
me as mega-naive that answering a single question correctly
could result in enlightenment. If I was ever tempted to
dedicate my life to Zen in hot pursuit of satori (bra size
36), that corny question and its outrageous promise quickly
disabused me of all things Zen: such as, “for the
arrow to hit the target," Zen master says to bewildered
student, "become the arrow.” That dollop of wisdom
put an end to both my archery career and the hospitalized
instructor for whom there was no n-arrow escaping. And in
consideration of my then rabid hormone count, hitting the
target (any vagina) by becoming my penis turned out to be
a meditation in futility. In point of fact, until I turned
30 I was never anything but my penis.
Notwithstanding
major objections from friends and the unpremeditated wrath
from the meditation crowd, I regarded the Koan and the society
it engendered as a ploy of the con-man, and its misfit-devotees
the raw material cults prey on. That on Monday, I’m
a nostril excavating, cannabis wrecked hippie devoted to
the path of least resistance, and the next day an enlightened
Buddha, registered as incredulous as Corpus Christi rising
from the dead. On top of which I had come to know several
enlightenment chasers
whose motives were highly suspect on the way to their
tryst with satori: one took to the ashram circuit for free
room and board and to prey on vulnerable women. Closer to
home, Montreal, one master
required unconditional surrender from students who were
obliged to turn over their entire weekly salaries while
the female contingent were repurposed as sex slaves. Other
masters were outright sado-masochists, obliging their disciples
to submit to (in order to transcend) extreme physical pain:
below-zero meditation, whipping and caning.
I
quickly came to regard the Zen enterprise as nothing more
than an excuse for the smart and strong to exploit and abuse
the dumb and the weak.
As
for the promise of enlightenment and transcending duality,
have already expatiated on that fatuous undertaking and
leave you with a copy/paste from the original.
Om is the vegetative state raised to the highest eminence,
om is lobotomy, om is non- being, om is anti-being,
om is dereliction, om is abdication, om is inauthentic,
om is dumbness, om is rap, om is Indian drone, om is
minimalism, om is drug addiction, om is sports addiction,
om is games addiction, om is danger addiction, om is
any activity that (by design) keeps you imprisoned in
the present where there is no past, no future, no self-consciousness,
no judgment. Omers are cowards and like Nietzsche’s
Christians and priests, they are the antithesis of life,
of the will to power. Om is pure cop-out, and the gurus
and Zen masters are the great escape artists; and, taking
liberties with the Beatles lyric, yes indeed "living
is easy with eyes closed oming all you see." When
an evolved omer claims his eyes are open but he doesn’t
see because he’s not separate from the world,
he has willed himself to occupy the lowest rung on the
chain of being, which is a mere syllable away from non-being.
Behind every om ever uttered lurks a closet suicide
looking to out himself on the end of threadbare hope.
Why would anyone who doesn’t harbour a death wish
want to transcend duality? I love duality. I love -25
Celsius because it enables me to appreciate + 25. If
there were always and only 25 Celsius, the very concept
of temperature would disappear, along with the four
seasons. Viewed from afar, all human endeavour -- doctrinally
frowned upon by the oming fraternity -- implicitly aims
at cultivating an appreciation of duality: we work hard
to play hard, we travel far to better appreciate what
is near.
The difference between metaphysics and the philosophy
of oming is that the former encourages us to dwell in
the sacred nexus between being and nothingness while
the latter is a death wish.
And if I grant that my somewhat jaundiced view of Zen and
beggar-cup carrying saffron robed monks hasn’t changed
since those heady days of my youth, I have to confess that
I have never been able to totally disentangle myself from
Zen doctrine, in particular the Koan that asks: what is
the sound of one hand clapping?
WHAT
IS A ZEN KOAN?
A
Koan is a puzzle, or riddle, or paradox Zen masters employ
to help initiates unravel the great truths about themselves
and the world. They are encouraged to “abandon ultimate
dependence on reason” which facilitates sudden intuitive
enlightenment. The Zen master knows the meaning of all the
Koans because he is enlightened.
Of
the 1,700 Koans, “what is the sound of one hand clapping”
is regarded as the most difficult, and when answered, it
results in enlightenment. To wit:
Master
Hakuin (1686-1769) attained satori (enlightenment) with
the answer "I have heard sound without sound!"
Washing
his master’s feet with one hand resulted in enlightenment
for Wang Xiang in the early 19th century.
A
student allegedly thrust out his one hand and attained
enlightenment (became a Buddha).
Since
there is no single answer to a Koan, each student will find
his way to the answer according to his nature and the unique
circumstances of his life.
And
that is where I begin, with the here and now, and this essay,
whose sole mandate is to revisit, without pride and prejudice,
the one-hand-clapping Koan with one goal in mind: to exorcise
my remaining Zen demons. As for transcending duality, that
is a non-starter or the unique dispensation of all non-living
matter and vegetable life.
My
method will be straight forward: pry open the question with
one arm, that is rip it out of its mystical underpinnings
and expose its bogus indices and outright silliness (measured
by frittered away time).
To the question at hand, the obvious first answer is that
one hand can’t clap, that is make a sound, but since
that response doesn’t result in satori, we have to
grant the question its specific gravity, which means the
student must address the key word in the question, which
is sound, or the absence of sound, which is a duality that
has to be transcended. In my circumstance, since there is
no short answer to the Koan, the question suggests a method,
or process or gradual unveiling which might require a lifetime
before it yields its fruits. Again, it depends on the person:
Einstein reports that he understood relativity in a flash;
for most everyone else, a lifetime isn’t time enough.
If the proper measure of a good question is its ability
to endure over time, the hand-clapping Koan deserves top
ranking since it hasn’t disappeared into oblivion.
Another
possible answer is that there is no answer, which could
very well be the correct answer especially (presumptively)
since there is no such thing as enlightenment or higher
being, or being at one with the universe. Master T. S. Eliot
concluded: “We shall not cease from exploration. And
the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we
started. And know the place for the first time.”
Concerning
dedicated students who have sacrificed their selfhood to
a ‘presumed’ higher being, to finally recognize
that the Koan is an exercise in futility, or someone’s
sorry pretext to exercise absolute command and control,
must surely constitute an epiphany of sorts. While Zen initiates
sign up of their own free will, once enrolled they are anything
but free: body and soul belong to the institution, its directors
and financial planners.
Another
possible approach to the question is through the method
outlined in Martin Heidegger’s What Is Called
Thinking? Since one hand clapping cannot yield an actual
sound, silence becomes the necessary condition for thinking
to assert itself and ask what in life asks most to be thought
about – which of course will result in the immediate
dismissal of the Koan and others like it (Where is the pulse
located in a petrified tree?).
How
long can a thinking person defend the one-hand-clapping
question against philosophy’s timeless queries: Why
is there something instead of nothing? What constitutes
a meaningful life? Is there a God?
Perhaps
the key to objectively determining the appropriate status
of the question, that is situating it taxonomically in relation
to all other questions, is to “reculer pour mieux
sauter” (step back in order to better advance), or
to examine and interrogate the Koan from outside the box.
With
this long view in mind, what can we say about the question
and its world? After all, the question didn’t arise
in a vacuum, and has been around for more than 300 years,
which speaks more to the kind of species we are than the
question proper. From time immemorial man has shown himself
to be incurably
vulnerable to almost any idea -- no
matter how far-fetched (aggrieved parted avenges wrong by
sticking pin into doll).
We
know that someone, presumably a Zen master, is asking the
question. We also assume that since he is asking the question,
he knows the answer even though the answer will be unlike
his own. Secondly, the question is being directed to someone
or a group. Today, 300 years later, with the aid of satellite
and fibre optic communication technology, the question is
now being asked simultaneously everywhere, addressing anyone
who encounters it. At a very basic level, the question implies
a relationship between the one posing the question and those
endeavouring to answer it.
The
question implicates a student-teacher relationship, or bond,
or nexus, which wouldn’t exist if one or the other
didn’t participate. In other words, prior to the content
of any Koan, 'the other’ is implied. Without the other
there is no world, which directly speaks to the rationale
or teleology activating the question whose first purpose
is to serve as a bonding mechanism that allows for the exchange
of ideas. That there must be ‘the other’ is
the non-negotiable, the sine qua non of the human
condition, and the Zen Koan is one of the many means employed
to satisfy that set-in-stone desideratum. And whether
he is cognizant of it or not, the student engages the question
in order to satisfy the primordial need to be in community
with others. The French philosopher Merleau-Ponty, from
"Man and Adversity," observes how words "suddenly
swell with meaning which overflows into the other person
when the act of speaking binds them up into a single whole."
And from that same extraordinary 1951 essay, he writes:
"Sometimes one starts to dream about what culture,
literary life, and teaching could be if all those who participate
would give themselves up to the happiness of reflecting
together." To finally seize upon that insight and its
philosophical implications is to invest a previously dark
area with radiant light.
So
we again ask: “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”
The short and long answer is: You and I, or existentially
(ontologically) being-in-the-world-with-others.
Satori.
Master
Lewis wishes to announce that he is now accepting students
for meditation classes. Prior to arrival, all initiates
will be required to visit the Lewis Enlightenment Foundation
for the orderly disburdening of all material entanglements.
