Expert: Joe McSorley - 5/30/2004

Question
Dear Mr. McSorley,
I'm sure you are familiar with this koan from the Mumonkan.
Tokusan one day came down to the dining room carrying his bowls.  Seppo said, “Old Master, the bell has not rung and the drum has not yet been struck.  Where are you going with your bowls?”  Tokusan at once turned back to his room.  Seppo told this incident to Ganto, who remarked, “Great Master though he is, Tokusan has not yet grasped the last word of Zen.”  Hearing of it, Tokusan sent his attendant to call Ganto in and asked, “Do you not approve of me?”  Ganto whispered his reply to him.  Tokusan was satisfied and silent.  The next day Tokusan appeared on the rostrum.  Sure enough, his talk was different from the usual ones.    Ganto came in front of the monastery, laughed heartily; clapping his hands, and said, “What a great joy it is!  The old Master has now grasped the last word of Zen.   From now on nobody in the world can ever make light of him.”
My questions:
1. What are some of the problems with discovering the "last word of Zen?"
2. This koan is frustrating to me, which I assume is a good thing. What are some of the questions that you would ask yourself while meditating on it?
3. I know this is cheating, but what would be a possible answer to this koan?
4. Could you just talk to me a little about this koan?

Thanks very much for your time,
Thomas Pearce

Answer
   First let me say that I think real koan practice is one of the most beneficial techniques in Zen but only if understood correctly.  To face a koan with deep inquiry and integrity can push you to the limits of dualism with the eventual collapse of the normal mind.  I find it extremely effective.
  This koan is no different from any other koan.  You cannot figure it out or contrive an answer.  There is nothing to grasp here so what are you trying to grasp?   If you truly answer one koan, you answer them all.  I don't know if you're involved in a koan school of Zen but this is an inherent problem with  ‘koan schools' in that there is a huge misconception that you can answer them in series and attain enlightenment, which is sheer nonsense.
This is the idea that you can whittle down the self to have an awakening but I think it is somewhat faulty.  It may have been in the past that someone who had undergone this koan practice had a true awakening after being presented several koans and therefore saw this anomaly as a valid practice.  It is true that some koans ‘grab' you more than others but to fully grasp one is to grasp all of them. Masao Abe Sensei used to say that to whittle down the sides of a square to attempt to make a circle only creates more angles and is unending; you must smash the square (ego consciousness). I had a contemporary that entered into a koan practice school and took them on one at a time.  When asked “what is Zen while sleeping”?  He became stuck and couldn't answer it.  He mentioned this to his wife who replied “ Snore”.  He told this to his teacher in the temple who passed him to the next level!  Hard to believe you can cheat at this, further more, what's the point in that? How absurd this is.  This displays some of the weakness in this koan practice idea.  This whole system came about as an attempt to instill a koan into those people who do not have one naturally.  Many people come to study Zen as Zen, as though it is something of substance.  They do not come out of some huge existential crisis like Hui ka or Hui neng did with their huge dilemmas but only to study this thing called Zen.  So what is there for them to study?  Dogen formalized the study of Zen to help these people.  This idea of progression in koans is fraught with problems.  In the beginning of “Zen Comments on the Mumonkan”, Zenkei Shibayama's masterful work on the traditional ‘Mumonkan', the collection of koans, he states that ‘these koans are presented in no particular order…” (emphasis mine)  He does this to underscore the importance that breaking through one koan answers them all.

   Let me talk about the essence of what a koan really is; an existential dilemma that cannot be answered by the dualistic mind. Anything can be a koan, e.g. – I ask you where you are and you say  ‘ in my living room' where's that? – ‘in my house'  where's is that ‘ on such and such street'  where is that?  ‘in this town, state, country,etc'  where is that?  ‘on earth' where is that? And so on ad infinitum.  You cannot really answer the question without it being relative to something else, it is always in contradistinction to something else.  Here the relative subject/object dichotomy comes into play where both define the other.  This in Zen is the problem of dualism or dualistic thought.  We as individuals know that we are but do not know who we are.  We are a subject that only knows itself as an object.  We as the ego always separate and can only know things in contradistinction.  We cannot live in the real present because we cannot self reflect in the present so our minds constantly flit between past and future.  To be in the ultimate present, to see immediately in the eternal here and now is impossible for us, the ego.  We are an ever-regressing self stepping back to define itself.  It is like seeing your shadow and wondering who is casting the shadow so you step back to see it, on and on, ever regressing.  This is how the mind works in the Zen understanding of the human condition.  The koan is a question that must be answered ultimately but cannot be answered within the dualistic framework of the mind.  So when asked, “where are you?” it is an ultimate question that cannot be answered dualistically or for that matter, with language per se.   “What is the sound of one hand?” is not to be answered in the dualistic framework; one has to breakthrough this dualistic matrix and express it in a way that is beyond normal consciousness.  There are no set answers to these questions.  If you read a history of Zen you will see the same koan given many times with a variety of different answers.  The words in the answer don't really matter; it is what lies behind the expression that counts.  So there is no one answer to Tokusan's koan.  What he had to do was to demonstrate his being in the eternal moment.  He could have done this a thousand different ways because his presence is what is revealed here.  His silence would have been thunder and his shout a whisper, it doesn't matter.
 A lot is made of the koan these days as a trick or some Zen absurdity but it should not be so, it is the attempt to block the mind, to stop the self reflection, to confound normal thought in the hope that there is a profound and utter break through into a new consciousness.  Your mind must be utterly exhausted and confounded. If there is any place for thought to perch in your mind, you miss the koan.  To even see a koan is to ‘see the Buddha on the road', it is created by the mind and thus false.   What matters is who is it that is trying to grasp this koan.  Who are you?  What reaches out for this, sits, breathes and lives and dies?  This is the essence of answering the koan.  The koan should be yours and not some contrived query but a real existential attack on your very being that must be answered by you.  Any thought you have is not the answer nor is any dumb silence.  If you wish to grasp something in Tokusan than you are missing it.  Who is Tokusan other than a creation of your mind?  The very mind that seeks this answer is that which is being sought after.