For
centuries, the secret doctrines of Zen learning have been transmitted
from master to disciple in the form of seemingly absurd riddles called
koans. Intense meditation
upon these is said to lead to enlightenment
Which is the highest
mountain in the world? How many planets are there in the solar system? Will the
Loch Ness monster ever resurface? What inspired Newton? What caused Van Gogh's
prolific brilliance? Who killed Lady Diana? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Your time starts... now.
Mount Everest... nine... depends on
the health of the Scottish tourism industry... an apple... schizophrenia... don't
know but whoever it is will come up with a tell-all bestseller sooner or later...
the sound of one hand is... what was that again?
Rapid-fire questions, brainteasers, tantalizing posers, circuitous conundrums—we
thought we had seen them all, glued as we are night after night to all
those quiz shows out to make crorepatis (millionaires) of us all.
But that was before we encountered the most vexatious breed of them all—the
koan, a Zen
riddle so puzzling yet so potent that single-minded contemplation of one
may lead you to instant nirvana.
Zen, of which the koan
exercise is a tool, is a Japanese sect of Buddhism, which in spite of having
masters and monasteries believes paradoxically that nothing can be taught. Adepts
compare initiation into Zen to pouring 'boiling oil over a blazing fire'.
The logical mind is considered to be the greatest stumbling block on the way to
satori (enlightenment in Zenspeak), as is evident from this
koan: A monk was asked to discard everything. "But I have nothing," he
exclaimed. "Discard that too!" ordered his master.
Koans
have been an invaluable aspect of the spontaneous master-disciple interaction
in Zen. D.T. Suzuki explains in ZenBuddhism: "The
idea is to unfold the Zen psychology in the mind of the uninitiated,
and to reproduce that state of consciousness of which the statements are
an expression. That is to say, when the koans are understood the
master's state of mind is understood, which is satori
and without which Zen is a sealed book."
The prospect of satori
powers the quest in all spiritual practices. It is an experience so cataclysmic
that it has often been called a 'fiery baptism'. I like to think of it as a peep
into the soul of the universe that accompanies the dissolution of duality. P.S.
Wasu, who conducts workshops based on Zen, likens satori to an empty
circle: "There comes a state when the Zen practitioner is able to view
everything as a synthesis of opposites that arise from one another. All rational
judgments become irrelevant and one starts viewing reality intuitively as it actually
is—nothingness that is complete in itself, much like an empty circle."
A single dip in the experience of satori and one is transformed forever.
As judgmental constructs based on duality-subject-object, good-bad, success-failure-fall
by the wayside, one flows into a state of being where the rigid persona is sloughed
off. One begins to exist as life itself. "How can we know the dancer from the
dance?" in W.B. Yeats' Among school children seems to express
perfectly this existence in oneness sans boundaries that is satori.
That satori may be achieved via koans was the view evolved
by the monk Hakuin
of the Rinzai sect. Hakuin (1685-1768), a robust monk often likened
to Socrates for his predilection for Q-A sessions, vigorously opposed other
Zen sects that preferred to let enlightenment glide in through years
of zazen (Zen meditation). Rinzai
Zen, known as the 'sudden' school of enlightenment, however, gained
ground by adopting a conciliatory approach. 'Sudden' enlightenment was
acceptable after self-cultivation spread over many lives. The koan exercise
came to be viewed as a battering ram that broke down the final vestiges of rational
thinking already softened by zazen.
Traditionally, a master
would judge the novitiate's spiritual progress before giving him a koan.
The novitiate usually came up with answers founded upon logic or scriptures and
sutras, which the master summarily rejected. Of the final resolution, Hakuin
says: "If you take up one koan and investigate it unceasingly, your mind
will die and your will shall be destroyed. You face death and your bosom feels
as though it is on fire. Then suddenly you are one with the koan... and
you discover your true nature."
The
master would not hesitate to strike the disciple physically to resolve the koan.
Such resolution once had the monk slapping the master, Obaku, and yelling: "There
is not, after all, much in the Buddhism of Obaku." Rinzai explains
this idea of 'therapeutic hitting': "Many students are not free from the entanglement
of objective things. I treat them right at the spot. If their trouble is due to
grasping hands, I strike them there. If their trouble comes from their mouths,
it is there I strike." Rinzai was also famous for shouting Katsu!,
a nonsensical word, as an answer to koans.
Because of its tongue-in-cheek
humor, the koan is unparalleled in world mysticism. Take this koan
involving the master Bokuju. He was asked: "We have to dress and eat every day.
How can we escape from that?" Bokuju answered: "We dress, we eat." "I do not understand,"
persisted the questioner. "Then put on your food and eat your dress!" replied
Bokuju. In another koan, Hokoji, a Confucian asked haiku poet Basho:
"Who is he who does not keep company with any living thing?" Said Basho:
"I will answer that when you swallow the Hsi Ch'iang river in one draught." Clearly,
if we expect anything logically illuminating from Zen, we are missing the
whole point!
Providing an insight into the working mechanism of the koan,
Wasu says: "Years of social and psychological conditioning forges certain neural
pathways within the brain. Our thinking settles in these grooves making it difficult
for us to comprehend satori." Koans cause a unique spiritual tension
that forces the mind to break out of the trap of logic by using what may be called
intellectual violence.
Consider the famous 'Mu koan'. A monk asked
Master Joshu: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" Joshu replied: "Mu." Doctrinally,
its answer is 'yes' as all beings can evolve towards enlightenment (Buddha-nature).
But Joshu deliberately does not answer with an unequivocal 'yes' or 'no' so as
to demolish the monk's dependence on scriptural logic. 'Mu' is the Chinese ideogram
for 'nothing' which might also be interpreted as 'no-thing' or emptiness. With
a single syllable, Joshu has revealed no-thingness as the core of existence.
The
use of absurdity for conveying serious ideas is not an exclusive
preserve of Zen, although using it for enlightenment is.
The Dadaists
and Absurdists of post-World War Europe, faced with destruction
and disillusioned with the bourgeois society that did nothing to stop
it, despairingly concluded that existence is meaningless.
Dadaists used absurdity as a tool to articulate
despair. Dada art was created with junk and visually repulsive materials
as an expression of their stringent anti-establishmentarianism. Ben-ami
Scharfstein equates this nonsensical Dada trait with the 'mystical
madness' of Zen masters in his introduction to The Sound of the
One Hand. He cites a poem by one of the Dadaists, Kurt Schwitters
that begins with:
Z
A
R P
A
B C
and ends with :
Z
Z
Z
This
nonsense verse is compared to one composed by Master Mumon who attained satori
after a four-year contemplation of the 'Mu koan':
Mu! Mu! Mu! Mu!
Mu!
Mu! Mu! Mu!
But the similarity ends at this comprehension of the innate nothingness
of the universe. Whereas the 'no-mind' state is the desired bliss of Zen,
the 'nothingness' of the European Absurdists is morbid and frightening.
Emptiness is painful for Beckett, Camus,
Kafka, and Proust
who live in a universe abandoned by God with only one exit gate: death.
At the core of Zen's no-mind state lies silence. And it is not
only the koans that reflect this lingual austerity. According to Dr Satya
Bhushan Verma, Professor Emeritus of Japanese at JNU Delhi, haiku, the
17-syllable Japanese poems, started out as koans. "In those 17 syllables,
the poet has to compress an entire wealth of meaning, much like the nonsensical
words of the koan that have the power to enlighten." However, Thomas
Hoover, author of Zen Culture differs. About Basho's haiku
he says: "Whereas the anti-logic koans were intended to lead up to this
moment (of satori), Basho's haiku were the moment of enlightenment
itself." He quotes this deceptively simple haiku that describes "an intersection
of the timeless and the ephemeral":
An ancient pond
A
frog jumps in
Plop!
With
their canonization, much of the spontaneity of the interactive koan experience
was lost, what with the same koan being given to a number of novices during
a lecture. In recent times, the dynamic koan tradition has all but disappeared.
Says Dr Verma: "The ancient koans may still be parroted in certain monasteries
in Japan but there are neither the masters nor the disciples to carry on the tradition."
Though their customary irreverence and humor have made koans popular in
the West, purists might argue that mere reflection on them is not enough, they
have to be accompanied by self-cultivation.
The koan is just
one of the many tools employed in Zen. Almost every activity performed
during the course of the day in the Japan of old was elevated to 'the path of
Zen', whether it be drinking tea, ink-painting, pottery or archery and
swordsmanship. Elaborate rules governed these, the trick was to bypass them and
unite with the action. For instance, the Zen archer unlearns his training
even as he stands poised with the bow drawn taut in his hands, aiming at the target.
Just before he lets the arrow fly, he becomes one with the target. The subsequent
release of the arrow has been has been equated with the resolution of a kaon,
both occurring without deliberation.
Finally, meaning becomes meaningless,
the writer merges with the world. Dirt collects under the fingernails, life flows
on. Concentrate on the moon, and not on the finger that points it out. Thanks
Basho, for reminding us. Silence spreads outwards from within one's being on the
wings of a thousand suns. The hand flies out and strikes itself. The cosmos reverberates
with the sound of one hand clapping.
For
centuries, the secret doctrines of Zen learning have been transmitted
from master to disciple in the form of seemingly absurd riddles called
koans. Intense meditation
upon these is said to lead to enlightenment
Koans
have been an invaluable aspect of the spontaneous master-disciple interaction
in Zen. D.T. Suzuki explains in Zen Buddhism: "The
idea is to unfold the Zen psychology in the mind of the uninitiated,
and to reproduce that state of consciousness of which the statements are
an expression. That is to say, when the koans are understood the
master's state of mind is understood, which is satori
and without which Zen is a sealed book." 
The
master would not hesitate to strike the disciple physically to resolve the koan.
Such resolution once had the monk slapping the master, Obaku, and yelling: "There
is not, after all, much in the Buddhism of Obaku." Rinzai explains
this idea of 'therapeutic hitting': "Many students are not free from the entanglement
of objective things. I treat them right at the spot. If their trouble is due to
grasping hands, I strike them there. If their trouble comes from their mouths,
it is there I strike." Rinzai was also famous for shouting Katsu!,
a nonsensical word, as an answer to koans. 
The
use of absurdity for conveying serious ideas is not an exclusive
preserve of Zen, although using it for enlightenment is.
The Dadaists
and Absurdists of post-World War Europe, faced with destruction
and disillusioned with the bourgeois society that did nothing to stop
it, despairingly concluded that existence is meaningless. 
With
their canonization, much of the spontaneity of the interactive koan experience
was lost, what with the same koan being given to a number of novices during
a lecture. In recent times, the dynamic koan tradition has all but disappeared.
Says Dr Verma: "The ancient koans may still be parroted in certain monasteries
in Japan but there are neither the masters nor the disciples to carry on the tradition."
Though their customary irreverence and humor have made koans popular in
the West, purists might argue that mere reflection on them is not enough, they
have to be accompanied by self-cultivation. 
