For almost a year he pondered what the sound of one hand might be.Īt last Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. The sound of one hand was not the locusts.įor more than ten times Toyo visited Mokurai with different sounds. In vain Toyo meditated to hear the sound of one hand. “That is the sound of dripping water, but not the sound of one hand. The very strain of koan meditation found in The Sound of the One Hand is not unlike the self-imposed strain of a creative mathematician, writer, or artist.Such a person deliberately sets himself difficult problems, and deliberately renews them once they have been solved in order to compose or harmonize or solve himself. When he next appeared before his teacher, he imitated dripping water. “What can the sound of one hand be?” He happened to hear some water dripping. Thinking that such music might interrupt, Toyo moved his abode to a quiet place. When the many are reduced to one, to what is the one. You need both hands in order to generate the sound of applause. However, in the post-coronavirus social context, that sound is deadly silence. Now, on to the koans: What is the sound of one hand clapping A monk asked master Haryo, What is the way Haryo replied, An open-eyed man falling into a well. What is the sound of one hand clapping This ancient Zen koan is not actually meant to be answered but to stimulate new ways of thinking. This is known as seeing into one’s nature. The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas. Then suddenly, you are one with the koan, and body and mind are cast off. What is the sound of one hand () Victor Hori Comments.in the beginning a monk first thinks a kan is an inert object upon which to focus attention after a long period of consecutive repetition, one realizes that the kan is also a dynamic activity, the very activity of seeking an answer to the kan. From his window he could hear the music of the geishas. CASE: Hakuin: Two hands clap and there is a sound. Toyo bowed and went to his room to consider this problem. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. “You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together,” said Mokurai. When The Sound of the One Hand came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal.
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.
In the evening little Toyo went at the proper time to the threshold of Mokurai’s sanzen room. “You are too young.”īut the child insisted, so the teacher finally consented. 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. He had a little protégé named Toyo who was only twelve years old. The master of Kennin temple was Mokurai, Silent Thunder.