Expert: Joe McSorley - 12/3/2009

Question
Dear Mr. McSorley,
I have read your answer about zen koans. You said anything could become a koan, it cannot be really answered with a dualistic mind, and there could be many answers to a koan. What could be a possible koan?

Thank you.

Answer
Dear Bib,
   When I say anything can become a koan I mean that when a question is faced ultimately it can become the koan.  Our dualistic discriminating minds only answer things in a relativistic manner, e.g.- I ask, where are you?  You answer, here.  Where is here?  It’s on the chair by the table. Where is that? In the room, in this house, on this street, in this city, on and on, one thing relative to another yet no real answer where ‘here’ is.  Here is a relative term that exists as opposed to there.  If you were to numb all your senses so that you are completely unaware of the outside world you could be physically moved anywhere but to yourself, would you have moved at all without those perceptions?  What is the ‘I’ and what space does it occupy?  If you say, “my body is here” there is that which claims the body to be ‘my body’, something that stands separate from it to make such a statement. So a simple question like’ ‘where are you’, when delved into deeply can eventually reach a state where the dualistic mind cannot answer it and thus becomes a true challenge to the self, it becomes a koan.
   My teacher told me that the great master, Shin ichi Hisamatsu, upon meeting people would ask, “ how are you”.  He was not asking the polite question but actually issuing a challenge, “How is it that you are”?  It was a true koan many missed.
  If you are to say “I am in pain” then the question probed into can become “who is the I that is in pain?”  When deeply inquired we might say the stomach is in pain but whose stomach is it? Where is the I that feels and perceives pain?  This goes for almost anything.  We say we are in love and make all the assumptions about what that means but what exactly does it mean?  Who is it that is in love and exactly who is it that is loved? We say we are in love because we care about someone or desire them but those things are the acts of caring and desiring and you can have them without love.  When you don’t use things that aren’t love to describe love what do you have left?  What is love in and of itself without the comparatives?
  I once introduced a friend of mine to Masao Abe Sensei and my friend commented something about his own life and Abe (ah-bay) said back, “How do you know you are alive”?  My friend fell silent and never offered an answer.  Someone might ask, ‘what is the meaning of life’ but then the question is, what is life or what do you mean by your life?  We immediately assume a meaning to our words like love and life but what are those things of and in themselves?
   Ultimately any question must come back to the questioner, who is asking the question.  So before we talk about pain, love, here, there, awakening or whatever we need to know who it is that makes these assertions.  This will ultimately put us in a no-way out situation of facing ourselves in the present which is the basis of all koans and that is, who are you?
    I hope this is understandable to you.  Take care,
         Joe

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