A powerful bit of zen that has seeped into popular culture is Hakuin’s, Sound of One Hand. In the original koan, Hakuin, an eighteenth century Japanese zen master, challenges his students by saying, “You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one?”
A koan is a short story that is usually about ancient zen masters, their students, and a moment of awakening. In traditional zen practice, the stories are used as a tool to break through conventional ways of thinking. By meditating on them, zen practitioners seek a basic state of awareness, unbound by dualistic perceptions.
Nowadays, people far and wide can demonstrate familiarity with zen philosophy by posing that paradoxical question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” On the television series, The Simpsons, young Bart answers the question by holding out his hand and clapping his three fingers against his palm. That is a reasonable answer, which would go over well in many zendos, but it’s not really what Hakuin was getting at.
To really penetrate a koan, you need to let the koan penetrate you. You need to drop off your regular way of thinking and encounter the bare essence of what thinks. That is a lot to ask of a person. It is a lot to ask of yourself. However, once you get hooked on the idea that there is a fundamentally different way to experience yourself and the world, and that contemplating the sound of one hand clapping may be the key to open that gate, then you start to wonder deeply about the sound of one hand.
The opposite of dualistic thinking, is not non-dualistic thinking. Stuck in the trappings of language, that sounds even more dualistic than the original. The opposite of dualistic thinking is NOT thinking. Thoughts tend to come in such rapid succession, filling in all voids in a gushing stream of consciousness, that not thinking is harder than you think. It takes practice and special tricks to hear past the noise of our own thoughts.
Trying to imagine the impossible is one way to cut through the habitual logic we rely on to resolve dilemmas. It is like sending our minds for a long walk on a short pier. If we undertake the journey earnestly, we end up striding where there is no ground. There, we find the ungrounded ground of our essential nature.
Usually, at this point in a post, I try to encourage a bit of mindful breathing, but this time I want to give you an unorthodox zen wake up call. To vividly experience the sound of one hand clapping, open one of your hands and hold it out in front of you with your palm facing your face. Notice your life’s story written there in the lines. Engage you hearing and listen to the obvious and subtle sounds all around you. Now, smack yourself in the forehead. THWHAT! Words can’t do it justice.
How does the conscious nature of the universe perceive itself? Through your eyes and ears and clapping hands. I write and you read. You speak and I listen. A baby cries and a mother feeds it. That’s what one hand clapping sounds like. It’s the roaring applause in an empty theater. Just like that.
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