San Francisco Zen Meditation

Talks and Blog

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Calendar
    • Blog
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Zen Reading

10/30/2018

A Course on Koans - Kicking Over the Pitcher

1 Comment

Read Now
 

In the Introduction to this series, I said that physical action is integral to Zen koan training. I chose today’s koan because it uniquely illustrates why Zen favors a physical, “embodied” response to koans rather than a response based on words. Here is a compressed version of today’s koan:

A great Chinese Master was asked to nominate an abbot for a new temple then under construction. He arranged a contest between his temple’s head monk and its head cook to see who would get the post. The Master, pointing to the water pitcher by his cushion, challenged them, “Do not call this a water pitcher. What will you call it?” The head monk answered, “It can’t be called a wooden sandal”. In his turn, the head cook walked up and kicked over the pitcher, spilling its contents. The Master laughed and said, “The head monk loses!”

In those days a head monk was often more of an administrator, while the job of head cook was usually entrusted to someone who showed spiritual promise. Why is that? In making decisions, an administrator can easily get lost in worldly concerns about the future of the temple. In contrast, head cooks make quick, intuitive decisions in handling food with their own hands. As discussed previously, cooks are more “intimate” with their own true nature because their mind and bodies are constantly united in the present moment by their actions in the kitchen.

Bearing this in mind, can you see why the head monk’s presentation was lacking?  While avoiding the words “water pitcher”, the head monk merely said it was not something else. This may have been a desperate attempt to mimic the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, who held that negating a proposition is more truthful than asserting it.

Nagarjuna’s position was that any positive description remains incomplete because it fails to illuminate the nature of the word “is” in the proposition. In the positive proposition, “That is a water pitcher”, we have left out any description of what constitutes its  “is-ness”. We cannot describe  the immediate presence of something beyond saying “it is” (here and now).

The fact that the water pitcher is impermanent is also left out; a pitcher in shards is no longer a pitcher. Provisionally, we call it a pitcher, but we can’t say of anything that “this is that” forever. If we leave aside any reference to Nagarjuna, the head monk’s answer is even more unconvincing.

Again, the head monk was attempting to say something about water and pitchers (though in a negative form) rather than showing their nature.  In contrast, the head monk, without words – and with one poke of his foot – directly presented the nature of human beings, water, and containers. In the case of humans he presented our unconquerable spirit; in the case of water he presented the flowing nature of water; and in the case of containers he showed the limits of containing.

I will repeat here a paragraph from the Introduction to this series: “Think about it: if it is only your conceptual mind that is being expressed (i.e. you are only expressing propositions about life), your whole being (i.e. your truth in the present moment) is not being expressed… In Zen, mind and body are one, and the fundamental point (the true nature of life) cannot be expressed by saying with words, but only by showing the union of body and mind in this moment.”

Embodiment in physical action is Zen’s answer to the notorious “mind-body problem” of Western philosophy. That “problem” is the still unresolved question of whether physical reality and mental reality consist of fundamentally different “substances”. The idea that they are different is called “dualism”, and goes back to at least Plato and Aristotle. Dualism inevitably results in spooky metaphysics, as shown by the supposed “problem” of free will.

Dualism still survives in the currently fashionable philosophical question of “how the brain becomes the mind”. With Zen, the “problem” of dualism simply disappears. When mind and body are united in action, they are one and the question of “different substances” drops away and we are suddenly beyond mind and/or body! The question of substances doesn’t fundamentally arise during action, but only afterward. I personally believe that neuroscience will ultimately lead to a rethinking of mental causation that can include this ancient insight of Zen.

When a student becomes desperate enough to show the action in the koan with their own body, they often do so tentatively because they are afraid of making fools of themselves. This will not do. The teacher will urge the student to continue working with the koan and come back when they are “more intimate” with it. This may simply mean that their presentation was half-hearted when it needed to be whole-hearted.

I once heard a student complain to the teacher that this physical mode of presentation made her feel she was being forced to “fake it”, as in the game of charades. The teacher simply replied with a formula borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous: “Yes! You have to fake it until you make it!” There is something profoundly true about our practice in that statement. In the end, enlightenment comes down to “whole-heartedness”.

So how will you demonstrate your whole-hearted understanding of the water pitcher? Clearly, a philosophical discussion of the kind I have just offered cannot be considered “whole-hearted”, “intimate”, or “alive”! You must find a presentation that is. And don’t worry about appearing foolish – our practice consists of completely realizing human foolishness!

Share

1 Comment
Toby Morris
11/10/2018 11:36:31 am

Nice, Michael!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

Details

    Author(s)

    “A Course on Koans” is the delusion-riddled work of Chris Kufu (“Wind in the Void”) Wilson, who began practicing Zen in 1967. He regards Taizan Maezumi, Robert Aitken, and David Weinstein as his root teachers. Each of them pecked at his shell until he “completed” the never-ending koan curriculum of the Harada-Yasutani lineage.

    Get posts as they are published:

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    October 2016
    March 2016
    July 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009

    Categories

    All

    What We Read

    Serina's Travel Blog
    Shoshin
    Zenosaurus
    Eugene Koan Blog
    A Zen Jesuit's Blog
    Christian Koans
    Twelve Step Zen Blog
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Calendar
    • Blog
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Zen Reading