Zen ‘Koans’: What Is the Sound of One Hand?

Busy Busy Beggar (Aizu Museum, Waseda University)

Posted by Keith Tidman

‘Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?’

The puzzle above long ago entered popular culture, and is familiar to many: The question’s origins date back to one of the most influential Zen Buddhists, Hakuin Ekaku, whose life straddled the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Zen name for such a puzzle is koan — a paradoxical anecdote, dialog, or question. The idea is that koans permit thinking to escape the bounds of rationality and instead embrace intuition-like ways to awaken enlightenment and arouse spiritual development. It’s a realm where logical reasoning is shown inadequate, to be suspended. By pondering the mystery of koans, contemplative monks absorb Buddhist teachings — letting go of the strictly analytic method to understanding, and instead learning to accept ambiguity and paradox and the absence of just one truth.

There are more than 1,700 classical koans, amassed over many centuries in China, Japan, and elsewhere (Thomas Cleary, Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record, 2002). Each one is a meditative device aimed at prompting the deep awareness that comes only from an open, freed-up mind. The interpretations of koans are often not obvious or clear-cut, their ambiguity making multiple alternative insights possible. In turn, these insights might lead to additional questions, inviting further reflection.

As far as the pursuit of open-mindedness and intuition goes, the following aphorism was offered in the Diamond Sutra:

‘Out of nowhere, the mind comes forth’. 

The observation originated in a 9th-century Sanskrit document, translated into Chinese, which was among thousands of scrolls hidden in ‘The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas’, evidently a library concealed to protect its contents.

Here’s another koan, perhaps less well-known outside of Zen circles:

Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. One insisted, ‘The flag moves’. The other equally insisted, ‘No, it is the wind that moves’. They argued back and forth but couldn’t agree. The Zen master Huineng was passing by and, having overheard the two monks, said, ‘It is not the flag moving. It is not the wind moving. It is your mind moving’. 

In this koan, the minds of the first two monks were riveted on the flapping flag, becoming increasingly obsessed with the issue of whether the flag was moving (the observable world) or whether it was in reality the wind that moved  (an invisible force acting on the observable world). Huineng’s point is that the two monks’ minds had become agitated over a minor distraction, consumed by binary, either-or thinking, instead of being in the restful state fostered by Zen Buddhism. Huineng reminded them to move beyond the diversionary tug of who was right or wrong — as both were seeing only partial truth — and instead calm their needlessly restless minds, caught up in the argument.

This anecdotal koan is less enigmatic, but likewise offers a valuable insight into human behaviour:

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a woman in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. ‘Come on’, said Tanzan, at once lifting the woman and carrying her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night, when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. ‘We monks don’t go near females’, he told Tanzan, ‘especially not young and attractive ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?’

‘I left the woman there’, said Tanzan. ‘Are you still carrying her?’

The account has various interpretations. One version is not to let the past consume you, such that an out-of-control preoccupation crowds out of the mind all else of greater value, including the present — forfeiting immediate experiences. Ekido was plagued by the niggling urge to judge and conform, unable to let go of re-litigating over and over whether Tanzan had violated the literal monastic code of conduct.

In doing so, Ekido succumbs to stepping outside of mindfulness, sacrificing what’s transpiring in the here and now. Meanwhile, Tanzan had moved on. Sometimes, moral codes are cloudy, even appropriately flexible in interpretation and application in order to bend to circumstances. As in this case, the right ‘moral’ choice may have been to break momentarily with convention in order to do a kindness — a higher good.

Another ‘paradoxical anecdote’ offers a different insight: 

Nan-in, a Zen master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who had arrived to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. ‘It is overfull. No more will go in!’ ‘Like this cup’, Nan-in said, ‘you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’

Here, the need to let go of — to unlearn — long-held, unaccommodating beliefs, preconceptions, biases, expectations, knowledge, and presumed wisdom is a prerequisite to opening the mind to learn new and different things. The paradox is that arguably the professor might not be able, no matter how sincere his intentions, to disassociate from a lifetime of learning — unable to empty his metaphorical cup.

This is another classic koan:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger racing after him. Coming to a precipice, the man caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. Just then, the man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

The man faces inevitable death on all sides, trapped by a hungry tiger above and one below. He also faces the two mice, whose gnawing on the vine bodes increasingly dire outcomes. The man chooses to live in the moment, enjoying the luscious strawberry. It is a moment of sublime happiness. Seeing the tigers on each side, the man sees his life similarly bracketed: Before life he had nonexistence and after life he will return to nonexistence, for eternity. He is left with the present. We might similarly conclude the best option in life is to grasp that singular moment in which we relish the ‘strawberry’.

So, what to make of the koan, at the start of this essay, asking about the sound of one hand? The point is that a koan is dynamic and transformational, in the sense that it is, to recall the words of philosopher and Zen monk G. Victor Sogen Hori (in Zen Sand, 2003):

‘…both the object being sought and the relentless seeking itself. In a koan, the self sees the self not directly, but under the guise of the koan. . . . When one realizes (‘makes real’) this identity, then two hands have become one. The practitioner becomes the koan that he or she is trying to understand. That is the sound of one hand.’

In today’s world, heavily influenced by the ubiquity of the scientific method, analysis, quantification, and logic, people are heavily swayed by this way of thinking in which society seeks insight, knowledge, understanding, and even wisdom. But despite the significant contributions such approaches make available, they overlook and even obscure key aspects of the world and life. Perspectives on what motivates our thinking, our relationships, our values, our connections to the planet, our happiness, our fundamental nature, our intent, our enlightenment, and our potential.

In this way, the ancient koans — with their emphasis on intuitiveness, open-mindedness, and spirituality — are still able in the modern era to inform, inspire, and guide these vital human interests.

How Shall We Re-establish Ethics in Our Time?

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

We have nothing to show today, writes Simon Blackburn, for ethical foundations. At the beginning of the 21st century, we are ethically adrift. Not reason, not religion, not intuition now seem adequate for grounding our behaviour.

Not only does this present us with a philosophical problem. On a social level, we are conflicted and disorientated with multiple ethics, while on a global level, our ethics increasingly seem to have come apart – with deepening poverty, social disintegration, and environmental destruction being the order of the day.

Philosophically, it was David Hume who first observed that we cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. We cannot, on the basis of a handful of facts, derive any values. Gradually, over the following centuries, this idea took hold – until, with Ludwig Wittgenstein, it achieved a wide acceptance. 'Whereof one cannot speak,' he wrote, 'thereof one must be silent.' He was referring, most importantly, to ethics.

How, then, shall we re-establish ethics in our time?

Many, today, would consider the very question to be foolish. Yet given two simple conceptual prerequisites, I propose that we may indeed re-establish ethics, philosophically:

• Prerequisite 1. The fact-value distinction would have to be set aside. This, I believe, should be possible by ridding ourselves of facts – and with facts, of things (facts are, after all, about things). This may not be as difficult as it seems.

• Prerequisite 2. We would need to reduce our world to relations, and only relations – without the existence of facts or things. Ethics – together with all other fields of inquiry – may then be defined in terms of relations, and relations alone.

With regard to the fact-value distinction then, it is important that we first understand that this rests on Hume's notion that all knowledge is subdivided into relations of ideas on the one hand, and matters of fact (and things) on the other. On closer examination, however, we find that this view cannot be sustained.

It was Francis Bacon who observed that the definitions of words have definitions. Similarly, we know that the features of words have features. Words, I have myself proposed, represent 'relations within relations'. Given that this is true, there can be no self-contained 'things'. Rather, our words (and thoughts) reach into an infinity of relations, and we speak about 'things' only by way of a truncated shorthand.

If, then, there are no self-contained 'things' in this world, and if our words (and thoughts) reach into infinity, then this must mean that we cannot speak truly about our world on the assumption that it is a closed system, in which we begin with axioms, origins, or specific reference points. This flies in the face of what we have before us. Rather, we need to step back from all systems, to view our world as an infinite canvas of relations.

I propose that we shall find, when we do this, that relations as a whole possess certain features – call them meta-features – many of which may only be recognised from a bird's eye view.

These features hold the promise of new ethical foundations:

• Feature 1. As we survey the infinite canvas of relations, we realise that some of the relations which we trace in this world do not in fact exist – and those relations which do not exist cannot form the basis of an acceptable ethics. Falsehood and deceit are, at bottom, attempts to trace non-existent relations.

• Feature 2. Since relations represent an infinite canvas – and any containment of relations detracts from this – the relations which we trace should range through all the world. The more we limit the scope of the relations which we trace, and the more we view things in isolation, the more we are at risk of fault or shipwreck, in any field.

• Feature 3. Since the relations which we trace should range through all the world, our ability to trace relations should not be obstructed or manipulated. This means that secrecy, propaganda, and misrepresentations are ruled out. Above all, an ethics of relations would favour an open society, since openness is a prerequisite for arranging our world.

• Feature 4. Relations are infinite, yet our minds are finite. Since our minds are capable only of encompassing limited regions of relations, this means that there will inevitably be relations which lie beyond our power to explain – and beyond our control. We need therefore to be acutely aware of our limitations of thought. There is no place for hubris.

• Feature 5. Infinite control is required to conquer infinite relations. Therefore our limitations may create within us powerful totalising urges. In view of our limitations therefore – which preclude any final ability to master our world – any ethics should avoid such totalising tendencies.

• Feature 6. When we elevate any given values above others in an infinity of relations, our (justified) fear that such values are empty and illusory grows. This may lead to a dysfunctional ethics, which drives us to fundamentalism – where fundamentalism is resistance to the fear of finding one's foundations to be exposed as baseless.

• Feature 7. We need to consider that we live in a world where new relations are continually emerging, which did not exist before, and in many cases were unimaginable just so many years ago. This means that ethics does not and cannot stand still.

Finally, when we view our world as an infinite canvas of relations, and only relations – having banished both 'facts' and 'things' – we may now define fact as those relations which are as we think they ought to be, and value as those relations which are as we think they ought not to be. In both cases, then – in all cases – we speak, at bottom, of 'ought'.

With careful consideration, we come to see that all of the natural and the human sciences, and all of our common life, represent value, not fact. Thus we escape the albatross of the fact-value distinction, and bring back ethics into the fold of philosophy.
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For a deeper exploration of these themes, one may refer to the author's Metaphysical Notes.