Sound, Silence & Koans (what is a koan?)

What is a koan? I’m sure you’ve heard a koan described as a device or method used in Zen meditation as an aid to achieving enlightenment. (called Satori in Japanese Zen).

A koan is also often described as a method to help us focus on or understand concepts which are beyond speech and thought.

A koan’s goal is to create a paradigm shift in thinking Koans are also used to help illustrate paradoxes, non-duality and our illusions or what is also called Avidya, a Sanskrit word translated as ignorance. Ignorance of reality.

The logical mind is considered to be the greatest stumbling block on the way to satori. One koan illustrates this very well:

A monk was asked to discard everything. “But I have nothing!”, he exclaimed. “Discard that too.”, ordered his master.

Koans are used by Zen masters to teach novices. Although, using this method, the master doesn’t teach the novice directly. By meditating on a koan, the novice teaches himself. In spite of having masters, novices and monasteries, Zens believes, paradoxically, that nothing can be taught. You use koans to figure it out for yourself.

In Zen training, there are a few koans which include the concept of sound or silence. The riddle of the “sound of one hand clapping” is quite well known:

The Sound of One Hand

The master of Kennin temple was Mokurai, Silent Thunder. He had a little protege named Toyo who was only twelve years old. Toyo saw the older disciples visit the master's room each morning and evening to receive instruction in sanzen or personal guidance in which they were given koans to stop mind-wandering.

Toyo wished to do sanzen also.

"Wait a while," said Mokurai. "You are too young."

But the child insisted, so the teacher finally consented.

In the evening little Toyo went at the proper time to the threshold of Mokurai's sanzen room. He struck the gong to announce his presence, bowed respectfully three times outside the door, and went to sit before the master in respectful silence.

"You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together," said Mokurai. "Now show me the sound of one hand."

Toyo bowed and went to his room to consider this problem. From his window he could hear the music of the geishas. "Ah, I have it!" he proclaimed.

The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas.

"No, no," said Mokurai. "That will never do. That is not the sound of one hand. You've not got it at all."

Thinking that such music might interrupt, Toyo moved his abode to a quiet place. He meditated again. "What can the sound of one hand be?" He happened to hear some water dripping. "I have it," imagined Toyo.

When he next appeared before his teacher, Toyo imitated dripping water.

"What is that?" asked Mokurai. "That is the sound of dripping water, but not the sound of one hand. Try again."

In vain Toyo meditated to hear the sound of one hand. He heard the sighing of the wind. But the sound was rejected.

He heard the cry of an owl. This also was refused.

The sound of one hand was not the locusts.

For more than ten times Toyo visited Mokurai with different sounds. All were wrong. For almost a year he pondered what the sound of one hand might be.

At last little Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. "I could collect no more," he explained later, "so I reached the soundless sound."

Toyo had realized the sound of one hand.

One can think about and meditate on koans for a very long time. For many of us, as Westeners, often don’t even know where to start with this kind of thinking or meditation.

I find it useful to remember that koans are not rational. It doesn’t involve rational thinking or problem solving. There is no right answer to a koan. Koans don’t really mean anything specific. Or at least, it means what you want or need it to mean, as long as you gain an insight from it, or some kind of enlightenment. Koans will mean different things to different people, depending on “where you are” at that moment, spiritually speaking. It depends on what you are grappling with. The best way to work with koans is just to sit with it. Repeat it. Consider it. The more you think about a koan, the more you will notice it popping up somehow throughout your day.

Another koan on sound and silence is: “If a tree falls in a forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”

One interpretation of both the One Hand Clapping and Tree Falling koan is that it asks us to listen profoundly, intensely, acutely, sincerely . A kind of listening that is not necessarily listening only with our ears.

Another interpretation is that the sound of one hand clapping is SILENCE. The deep silence and stillness that we experience during meditation.

I have also read that the acceptable answer is for “the novice to face the Zen master, take correct posture, and silently extend one hand forward. This answer embodies much of Zen philosophy. It is immediate, nonverbal, spontaneous, and intuitive, and so is creative thinking.”

One could also consider what the word “sound” or the word “silence” means. To you and to other people. Different sounds and different kinds of silence mean different things to different people.

I have realized over the past few weeks of thinking & talking about - and listening to – silence, that most people don’t like silence much. What I have also noticed is, in the very moment you notice silence, you aren’t engaged in the process of thinking itself. You are very aware at that moment of first noticing, but you’re not actually thinking. You can get the same kind of awareness by paying minute attention to the space we live in. The very room you are sitting in at the moment, most likely consists mainly of space.

To end off, Eckhard Tolle describes silence:

“Silence is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then [silence] is not really a thing. And it is not of this world.”