The Enlightenment Machines And The Sound Of Silence
Koans and true enlightenment
‘‘Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?’’
— Hakuin Ekaku
I recently read a superb article by Ani Eldritch on the necessity of silence within human communication. Like all interesting articles in Counter Arts and the Salon, it got me thinking and the mind resonating with waves of cognitive correspondence.
The similarity to a stone falling — or being thrown by a human being which is probably more appropriate — into a pool of water, is there with the impact of the singular constructed idea causing shockwaves to emanate within the pool of knowledge.
My shockwaves brought forth into my consciousness the memory of reading long ago a famous philosophical concept originating from Zen Buddhism composed by the Japanese master Hakuin Ekaku (see above).
The origin of this question and puzzle dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. The Zen name for such a puzzle is a koan — a paradoxical anecdote, dialogue, or question. There are more than 1,700 classical koans, amassed over many centuries in China, Japan, and a few elsewhere.
The idea is that koans permit thinking to escape the bounds of rationality and instead embrace intuition-like…
