Koans are Zen riddles that you do not
solve so much as step through, as through Alice’s looking glass, into Mad
Hatterish conundrums designed to stun rational sense and in its place induce
wordless insight. Perfect, simply perfect, for driving a professor of
philosophy insane. The most famous koan
is, What is the sound of one hand clapping? (Don’t try hitting one hand in the
air. Do, and you’ll hear the sound of one hand clapping – the roshi’s against the side of hour head.) My
koan concerned a monk who asked Joshu (a famous master in Tang-dynasty China),
‘Does a dog have Buddha-nature?’ Joshu’s answer seemed to imply no. The
conundrum: since the Buddha said that even the grass has Buddha-nature, how can
a dog not have it?
Every
day I came up with another ingenious answer; every day the roshi frowned and shook his head no; every day the bell would ring
and I would be told to come back tomorrow. I turned the koan upside down; I pulled it inside out; I unpacked each word and
repacked its meaning. Finally I thought, I’ve got it. The key word was have. A dog does not have Buddha-nature, not the way I have a
shirt or an ice-cream cone. Rather Buddha-nature has, or is momentarily taking
the shape of, that dog. But the roshi
did not even hear out my ingenious solution. Halfway through my explanation he
roared at me, ‘You have the philosopher’s disease!’ Then he softened a bit:
‘There’s nothing wrong with philosophy. I myself have a master’s degree in it
from one of our better universities. Philosophy works only with reason, though,
and there’s nothing wrong with reason, either. Your reasoning is fine, but your
experience is limited. Enlarge your experience, and your philosophy will be
different.’ Ding-a-ling-a-ling
sounded the little bell – signal that the interview was over. I had my
impossible assignment: to think of how to think the way I do not think.
If
a koan is mentally exhausting, try it
on sleep deprivation. It all but pushed me over the edge. At the end of my stay
at Myoshinji there was something like
a final-exam period, when the monks meditated virtually around the clock. Since
I was a novice, I was permitted the sybaritic luxury of three and a half hours’
sleep a night, which was grossly insufficient. That prolonged sleep deprivation
was the hardest ordeal I’ve ever endured. After the first night I was simply
sleepy. By the third night I was a zombie. From then on it got worse. The koans force the rational mind to the end
of its tether, and then sleep deprivation kicks in. Since you are not sleeping
and hence not dreaming, you in effect dream or lapse into quasi hallucinations
while you are awake, a kind of a temporary psychosis. I was in that altered
state during my last days at Myoshinji.
And
in that state I stormed into the roshi’s
room. Self-pity had become boring; fury was the order of the day. What a way to
treat human beings, I raged to myself. I wouldn’t just throw in the towel, I’d
smack it across the roshi’s face.
However, a certain decorum prevailed as I entered his audience room. I clasped
palms together and bowed reverentially; as I approached him I touched my head
to the tatami floor mat and flexed my outstretched fingers upward to symbolize
lifting the dust off the Buddha’s feet. Then our eyes met in a mutual glare.
For a few moments he said nothing, and then he growled, ‘How’s it going?’ It
sounded like a taunt.
‘Terrible!’
I shouted.
‘You
think you are going to get sick, don’t you?’ More taunting sarcasm, so I let
him have it.
‘Yes,
I think I’m going to get sick! Sick because of you!’ For several days my throat
had begun to contract and I was having to labor to breathe.
And
then, curiously, his face relaxed. His smirking expression disappeared, and
with total matter-of-factness he said, ‘What is sickness? What is health? Put
aside both and go forward.’
I
despair of ever conveying the uncanny impact those twelve words had on me. I
thought, He’s right. He is right. Sickness and health suddenly seemed beside
the point of what it means to be human; compared to that more abiding reality,
health and sickness were two sides of the same coin. Buddhism speaks of the ‘Great
No’s,’ such as ‘no birth, no death’ and ‘no coming, no going.’ There is
something within us that is not born and does not die and that comes from
nowhere and goes no place. Somehow after the roshi’s few words I found myself unexpectedly in a state of total
peace. I did my prescribed bow to the floor and exited the room, not only
determined to complete the two remaining days but confident that I could do so.
Since then I have often been sick, but off it goes to the side, and I go
forward.
Quoted from the superb book: Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.
