What Is The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?
Why Koans are a gateway to awakening.
A thin film divides you from awakened consciousness. The world as it is — without egoic contractions or illusions — is right on the surface, waiting to be seen. Koans are the way to see it.
A ‘Koan’ isn’t a riddle. It’s not an intellectual problem to be solved. Indeed it subverts the whole notion of a problem with a solution.
Each Koan sources back to a Zen master, who would bring on awakenings for students by its expression. Some are in word form, some not. For example, when one master was asked about awakening, he’d simply hold up a finger. On his death bed, he said he’d used the ‘one-finger Koan’ all his life, yet hadn’t exhausted it.
Another monk, after trying to awaken for years, eventually gave up. He left the monastery and retired to labor in a small village, sweeping courtyards. One day, his broom caught in a crack and flung a small pebble. By the sound made as it struck a piece of bamboo, the monk awakened. He returned to monastic life and began to teach. His experience birthed a new Koan, along the lines of “the Way is a stone striking bamboo”.
This morning, I meditated on one of the most famous Koans of all time, which originated in the 11th Century CE. It asks:
