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What is the sound of one hand clapping?
taiyaki
Veteran
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/04/buddhism-is-not-what-you-think.html?m=0
Quotations from 'Buddhism Is Not What You Think':
...All things are like this. Indeed, it's impossible for any conceived object not to be like this. Nothing stands on its own. Nothing has its own being. Each thing is inseparable from, and inter-identical with, all that it's not.
Thus perception is an objectless Awareness since, when we just see, what is truly seen involves not objects but the Whole. Nothing actually forms as an object; nothing stands apart. No matter where we look, there's just this.
Here's another example of a foolish-sounding Zen question that is actually an expression of just seeing: What is the sound of one hand clapping? When we conceive of a hand, it's just a single, isolated hand, and we're puzzled at the question. To clap, we need two hands. But this is approaching the question in our ordinary way - that is, conceptually.
With naked perception however, we see that a hand is not a separate and distinct hand. Everything is included with it. One hand clapping is the sound of two hands clapping is the sound of ten hands clapping. It's the sound before and after two hands clap. It's also the sound before and after one hand claps.
Conceptually, we think that sound is sound and silence is silence. The two seem neatly separated and distinct - in fact, opposite of each other. But this is only how we think, how we conceptualize. This is not how Reality is perceived, before we put everything into neat, nicely labelled (but deceptive) little packages.
We think there only has to be sound for there to be sound. We overlook that there must also be silence for there to be sound. And because of sound, there is silence. Were there no sound, how could there be silence?
Before you strike a bell, a sound is already here. After you strike the bell, the sound is here. When the sound fades and dies away, the sound is still here. The sound is not just the sound but the silence, too, And the silence is the sound. This is what is actually perceived before we parse everything out into this and that, into "myself" and "what I hear."
The sound of the bell is inseparable from everything that came before and that will come after as well as from everything that appears now. This includes your eardrum, which vibrates in response to it. It includes the air, which pulses with varying waves of pressure in response to it.
It includes the stick that strikes the bell. It includes the metallurgists, past and present, and those who learned to extract metal from ore and those who fashioned the bell. And it includes that ancient furnace, that supernova obliterated long ago in which this metal formed.
Remove any of these - indeed, remove anything at all - and there can be no sound of the bell. The sound of the bell is thus not "the sound of the bell." It is the entire Universe...
....
.....What Nagarjuna is pointing to is that believing things are impermanent involves a contradiction. First we posit separate, persisting things (in effect, absolute objects); and then we refer to them as impermanent (that is relative). What we fail to see is that we are still holding to a view of substance. We don't really appreciate the thoroughgoing nature of change, the thorough-going nature of selflessness.
We don't really appreciate the thoroughgoing nature of change, the thorough-going nature of selflessness. Nagarjuna makes it abundantly clear that impermanence (the relative) is total, complete, thoroughgoing, Absolute. It's not that the universe is made up of innumerable objects in flux. There's Only flux. Nothing is (or can be) riding along in the flux, like a cork in a stream; nothing actually arises or passes away. There's only stream.
..... That forms appear to come and go cannot be denied. But to assume the existence of imaginary persisting entities and attach them to these apparent comings and goings is delusion....
....
"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness," a poem by the great Chinese Zen teacher Tung-shan, speaks of the very same Awareness that the Buddha pointed to. This image of a jewel mirror was used as a way to express the source from which all things issue. All the myriad things, thoughts, and feelings we experience appear like images in a mirror: vivid yet insubstantial. The ungraspable mirror is what's Real, while the seemingly isolated things that appear in it are not.
Consider for example, the simple act of smelling a rose. We see the rose, feel the rose, bring it close, breathe in through our nose. We "smell the rose," as we say, though this refers more to how we conceptualize our experience than it does to what is actually experienced. To say we smell a fragrance would be closer to the actual experience.
But where does the act of smelling a fragrance takes place? If we attend carefully, we can see that all of our usual accounts of the experience start to break down.
Is the fragrance in the rose? If it was, how could you smell it? you're here while the rose is "out there" somewhere. On the other hand, if the rose were removed, you surely wouldn't smell the fragrance. But if you were removed - or if the air in between you and the rose were removed - you also wouldn't smell it.
So is the fragrance in the rose? Is it in your nose? Is it in the air in between? Is it in the air if no one is around to smell it? If so, how could we tell? Is the fragrance in your brain, then? And if it's in your brain, then why is the rose necessary at all?
Ultimately, the simple act of "smelling a rose" - or any other act involving a subject and object - becomes impossible to pin down and utterly insubstantial.
Gradually, however, we can begin to appreciate what the experience of smelling a rose actually entails. It's of the nature of the mirror itself - that is, that the source of all experience is Mind. As such, the act of smelling - or seeing or hearing or touching or thinking - literally has no location. This non-locality is the very essence of Mind.
Quotations from 'Buddhism Is Not What You Think':
...All things are like this. Indeed, it's impossible for any conceived object not to be like this. Nothing stands on its own. Nothing has its own being. Each thing is inseparable from, and inter-identical with, all that it's not.
Thus perception is an objectless Awareness since, when we just see, what is truly seen involves not objects but the Whole. Nothing actually forms as an object; nothing stands apart. No matter where we look, there's just this.
Here's another example of a foolish-sounding Zen question that is actually an expression of just seeing: What is the sound of one hand clapping? When we conceive of a hand, it's just a single, isolated hand, and we're puzzled at the question. To clap, we need two hands. But this is approaching the question in our ordinary way - that is, conceptually.
With naked perception however, we see that a hand is not a separate and distinct hand. Everything is included with it. One hand clapping is the sound of two hands clapping is the sound of ten hands clapping. It's the sound before and after two hands clap. It's also the sound before and after one hand claps.
Conceptually, we think that sound is sound and silence is silence. The two seem neatly separated and distinct - in fact, opposite of each other. But this is only how we think, how we conceptualize. This is not how Reality is perceived, before we put everything into neat, nicely labelled (but deceptive) little packages.
We think there only has to be sound for there to be sound. We overlook that there must also be silence for there to be sound. And because of sound, there is silence. Were there no sound, how could there be silence?
Before you strike a bell, a sound is already here. After you strike the bell, the sound is here. When the sound fades and dies away, the sound is still here. The sound is not just the sound but the silence, too, And the silence is the sound. This is what is actually perceived before we parse everything out into this and that, into "myself" and "what I hear."
The sound of the bell is inseparable from everything that came before and that will come after as well as from everything that appears now. This includes your eardrum, which vibrates in response to it. It includes the air, which pulses with varying waves of pressure in response to it.
It includes the stick that strikes the bell. It includes the metallurgists, past and present, and those who learned to extract metal from ore and those who fashioned the bell. And it includes that ancient furnace, that supernova obliterated long ago in which this metal formed.
Remove any of these - indeed, remove anything at all - and there can be no sound of the bell. The sound of the bell is thus not "the sound of the bell." It is the entire Universe...
....
.....What Nagarjuna is pointing to is that believing things are impermanent involves a contradiction. First we posit separate, persisting things (in effect, absolute objects); and then we refer to them as impermanent (that is relative). What we fail to see is that we are still holding to a view of substance. We don't really appreciate the thoroughgoing nature of change, the thorough-going nature of selflessness.
We don't really appreciate the thoroughgoing nature of change, the thorough-going nature of selflessness. Nagarjuna makes it abundantly clear that impermanence (the relative) is total, complete, thoroughgoing, Absolute. It's not that the universe is made up of innumerable objects in flux. There's Only flux. Nothing is (or can be) riding along in the flux, like a cork in a stream; nothing actually arises or passes away. There's only stream.
..... That forms appear to come and go cannot be denied. But to assume the existence of imaginary persisting entities and attach them to these apparent comings and goings is delusion....
....
"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness," a poem by the great Chinese Zen teacher Tung-shan, speaks of the very same Awareness that the Buddha pointed to. This image of a jewel mirror was used as a way to express the source from which all things issue. All the myriad things, thoughts, and feelings we experience appear like images in a mirror: vivid yet insubstantial. The ungraspable mirror is what's Real, while the seemingly isolated things that appear in it are not.
Consider for example, the simple act of smelling a rose. We see the rose, feel the rose, bring it close, breathe in through our nose. We "smell the rose," as we say, though this refers more to how we conceptualize our experience than it does to what is actually experienced. To say we smell a fragrance would be closer to the actual experience.
But where does the act of smelling a fragrance takes place? If we attend carefully, we can see that all of our usual accounts of the experience start to break down.
Is the fragrance in the rose? If it was, how could you smell it? you're here while the rose is "out there" somewhere. On the other hand, if the rose were removed, you surely wouldn't smell the fragrance. But if you were removed - or if the air in between you and the rose were removed - you also wouldn't smell it.
So is the fragrance in the rose? Is it in your nose? Is it in the air in between? Is it in the air if no one is around to smell it? If so, how could we tell? Is the fragrance in your brain, then? And if it's in your brain, then why is the rose necessary at all?
Ultimately, the simple act of "smelling a rose" - or any other act involving a subject and object - becomes impossible to pin down and utterly insubstantial.
Gradually, however, we can begin to appreciate what the experience of smelling a rose actually entails. It's of the nature of the mirror itself - that is, that the source of all experience is Mind. As such, the act of smelling - or seeing or hearing or touching or thinking - literally has no location. This non-locality is the very essence of Mind.
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