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Chicken and egg koan
Jeffrey
Veteran
I think the west has a koan that is dismissed as trite but has a nugget of wisdom.
What came first the chicken or egg?
I'll give my response after you guys, well if nobody answers then maybe not! If this is your koan what do you think? Maybe at least take 3 breaths letting things be (at least) before answering. Humor welcome but I am not kidding I have a nugget from this. Insignificant mini nugget samadhi. Hmmmm I think McDs chicken nugget mandala has hit me! Why do I think only of dipping sauces?
What came first the chicken or egg?
I'll give my response after you guys, well if nobody answers then maybe not! If this is your koan what do you think? Maybe at least take 3 breaths letting things be (at least) before answering. Humor welcome but I am not kidding I have a nugget from this. Insignificant mini nugget samadhi. Hmmmm I think McDs chicken nugget mandala has hit me! Why do I think only of dipping sauces?
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Comments
And to make the answer more Buddhist, if it were a river instead of a road, it would have taken a raft.
No wisdom here, I'm afraid.
Or is this the wrong koan?
The egg is nominally a chicken egg based on having come from a chicken. Since the egg is nominally of a chicken so the chicken is a chicken.
The chicken is nominally defined as one who lays chicken eggs by definition. So whatever we mentally label a chicken does in fact lay chicken eggs.
Thus immediately on declaring a chicken we have declared all eggs and vice versa.
Dependent Origination
"Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?"
Same koan. Same response.
The oak tree in the backyard.
Thus there is no true point or arrival, abiding, or ending. Just causes/conditions.
The chicken depends on a mind/body to project onto various colors which makes shapes and a collection of shapes which hit light and make form. We identify that pattern and project chickenness onto the color, shape, form.
This is why there can only be a beginning, middle, and end in the form of conventions. Reality experienced is quite different than our conceptual understanding.
Conceptual understanding always see's things, which affirms something or nothing. Reality is dependent arising, thus having nothing to do with something or nothing.
For the chicken and the egg, we have to define what exactly makes a chicken a chicken and what makes an egg an egg. How far back in evolution did the chicken deserve a new label and how hard does the protective layer over a preborn chick have to be to be considered an egg?
I'd say there was always the potential for both chickens and eggs and the difference could be likened to the difference between ice and steam.
I've heard it said that everything that ever existed or ever will exist exists right now. If the conditions are right, the chicken and egg cycle will manifest and if not, it will be hidden.
In this case the egg came first. :orange:
To make it simple, egg-laying creatures, evolutionarily speaking, existed long before any animals we could identify as chickens, did.
An animal evolved into the chickens we know, love (and often eat) today.
The eggs stayed pretty much the same....
therefore, the 'egg' came along, long before the 'chicken' did.
Suzuki Roshi answered, "It doesn't matter."
from Zen is Right Here
"It doesn't matter"
read,
"Jeezuskerrist, nearly 3000 years of Buddhist wisdom, and all you wanna know is whether a falling tree is noisy?? jeesh!"
Who cares? Just stop.
A similar simile is that of a flag waving in the wind and 2 monks arguing that it was the wind that moved or the flag. Their master then told them it was their mind that moved.
It means everything starts from the mind (mind is the fore-runner). Reality is nothing moved. Only the mind and depending on which way it moves both viewpoints are "right". Ignorance is condition for fabrications. The mind fabricates things. So the ultimate question is what happens when the mind stops fabricating.
terror and the fear of the rush of the river of being, and death
and decay overwhelm them. For their sakes, Sir, tell me where
to find an island, tell me where there is solid ground beyond
the reach of all this pain.”
“Kappa,” said the Master, “for the sake of those people
stuck in the middle of the river of being, overwhelmed by
death and decay, I will tell you where to find solid ground.
“There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond.
It is a place of no-thingness, a place of non-possession and of
non-attachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this
is why I call it Nibbana [the extinguished, the cool].
“There are people who, in mindfulness, have realized this
and are completely cooled here and now. They do not become
slaves working for Mara, for Death; they cannot fall into his
power.”
~ SN 1092–5