An acolyte was given a koan by his roshi. It was an ordinary koan; which one is not important. It was irrational, without logic, sensless, and not in an ordinary fashion to be solved. This was given the acolyte, and he took it away. He was to think about it, to meditate about it, to understand it.
First, he searched for some hidden meaning, some concealed answer. Turning it over in his head, he looked for a secret door through which he could enter and extract the meaning. There was none.
Next he tried analogy, associating the koan with other things of its class. But it remained closed, obdurate. There seemed to be no other things of its class.
Then he tried indication, circling about the object, regarding it from unexpected angles. But he could not creep up on it, could not surprise it. So, he began to doubt it.
It was absurd. There was obviously no answer. It was an impossible formulation. Yet, there it lay. And that was an aspect of it that he could not disregard.
So he decided to regard it. He looked at it, observed its shape, his eye following its now familiar contours. He noted its mass, its distinguishing features, its outline - and waited for it to stir. But it lay inert as a rock.
He decided to think about it no longer. But there was always a hole in the mental landscape where the koan sat. When he did not think about it, it was still there. It had a certainty about it, a reality. Turn his back upon it as he would, he was always aware of it, now in back of him, sitting there, prosaic and mysterious.
It was, he decided, simply a mundane object, like a cushion, a dog, a cat, himself. It is of no importance. It is like the breaths I count to calm myself.
The koan stirred.
Something had changed. He stared at it, looked at it as hard as he could. It was different somehow. It had been opaque. Now it was as though it had begun to grow, ever so slightly, translucent.
Several months had passed since he was first given the koan. He had talked about it with the roshi, about the various stages he himself had undergone, confronted with the rocklike koan. Now, for the first time, the koan itself seemed to have undergone a change. This, however, he did not tell the roshi. He sat, instead, and watched.
It seemed to change no further, yet something had altered, and this was in it and not in him. The koan was not solved because it was not in its nature to be solved.
Yet, it might still be understood. It was quite different. It still lay there but now more like a leaf than a rock. Its granite-like surface had become porous. It was now not quite solid.
Breaths to count, words to repeat - until all meaning was gone, lost in repetition. A small stone lying there in front of him, upon which he had once gazed so long and so hard that it had become itself.
His mindless gaze had made its background disappear - the sky, the forest, the stream, the bank in which stones are imbedded. It was this disappearance that had made the stone alter, had rendered it translucent.
This rock, this leaf, this koan had no context.
He asked to see the roshi.
"How is the koan coming?"
"There is no koan."
"How is that?"
"There is no koan, and which one is unimportant."
"Explain yourself", said the roshi seriously.
"The meaning of the koan is not in the koan."
"Good" said the roshi. "Push forward. You are now getting somewhere."
Donald Richie - Zen Inklings
For those who might not know, a koan is like a riddle, with no logic answer.
Sunday 6 August 2006
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