Hello, I'm Marina. This may sound strange, but I'm into zen now. No, I don't meditate. It's not exactly my style. I'm more into koan, which is a zen question.
My first encounter with koan took place about a year ago, when Kenji told me about it. As you may know, Kenji studied Indian Philosophy in a university, and has some knowledge about zen. He told me an example of koan in which a zen student was put into a difficult situation: his teacher would hit him if he said something, and would also hit him if he did not say anything. So, what should he say? The answer I heard from Kenji was very interesting, "It does not matter what the student said. He just had to prevent his teacher by force from hitting him."
This immediately reminded me of Star Trek films. In one of the films (I think it was the second one), Cpt. Kirk was said to be the only one in the history who passed the very difficult exam in the academy. The exam was a simulated battle, in which there seemed no winning solution. When Kirk, as a student, was put into the difficult (or rather, impossible) situation, he managed to get out of it by a method of which no one in the academy would ever dreamed - he pulled the plug of the simulating computer, just like the zen student who stopped his teacher by force from hitting him.
So this was the first impression of zen I had. For me, zen is a way to solve puzzles, a way to discover solutions. I know that many zen scholars would tell me it is misleading, but I have a feeling like I'm on the right track.
In fact, I've been collecting materials to prove my point. It is incomplete yet, but I was given a chance to explain my ideas here at MoMO, and I'll try my best making my point.
The important concept in my analysis of koan is "acquisition of wholeness." This is a mandatory problem when thinking about an ego or when treating schizophrenia. In Buddhism in general, an ego is a product of relationship (Kenji says it is a commodity and can be consumed). This is a notion which can be seen in other academic domains such as cultural semiology. An ego, being a relation rather than an entity, is unstable. If it can destroy the surrounding relationship and move to more stable state, then it becomes more whole than before. This is what I call "acquisition of wholeness." I think this acquisition of wholeness occurs whenever one discovers something in general.
Please send me your comments by e-mail. The address is common to all
museum people at Musée Psyché: psyche@yk.rim.or.jp
In a famous koan involving Daruma (a very famous priest in early Buddhism. You can see Daruma doll everywhere in Japan. It has no limbs. Someone explained to me that Daruma sat so long that he did not need his limbs anymore. Really weird), a student asks him, "My mind is unstable. Can you make it stable?" Daruma answers, "If you can present your mind in front of me, I will make it stable." The student says, "I looked for my mind everywhere, but I couldn't find it." Daruma says, "I've just made it stable for you."
I think that Daruma's intention in this koan was to tell his student that by observing an ego having no physical basis he could acquire wholeness. This is like a catharsis in psychiatry in a way that knowing the cause of a problem itself is a solution.
No one would say an ego consists of a body or blood or cells. The concept of "I" always requires "not I" for its existence (this "not I" includes one's body, as it is the first stranger that "I" encounters). An ego being unstable means that relations with others are unstable. As a relation is a mapping, one cannot really expect it to be stable anyway. This is why all of us is neurotic in some ways.
In order to be stable, one has to manipulate relations in some way, and must not to be manipulated by the relations. But many of us are. Many of us would, when presented a dirty $100 bank note and a clean $1 bank note, take the $100 bank note. Since a value system is based on differences and differences are relations, one who takes the $100 bank note is manipulated by the relations of monetary system. If one notices that the $1 bank note is cleaner than the other, then he or she is manipulated by the dirty-clean relation, but is more whole than who doesn't notice it. This is to see things in an non-ordinary way. By trying to see things in an non-ordinary way, one can manipulate relations and not the other way around.
Now, let me step back and place zen in the history of Buddhism. According to a scholar (one who taught Kenji), the history of Buddhism can be separated into three parts:
The important thing is that on the turning point of each, Buddha and Nagarjuna appeared respectively and said that an ego is a pheonmenon and is not an entity, or words to that effect. Zen is basically a division of popular Buddhism and refers to an absolute ego. However, in zen, the absolute ego and seeing it is inseparable, and is philosophically closer to the thought of Buddha himself.
Zen is practical and has two major methods for training: a) zenjo (meditation) and b) koan (question).
a) zenjo In my opinion, the point of zenjo is to control one's body, which is the first stranger for the ego. This is like manipulating the relationship and therefore is a way to acquire wholeness.
b) koan Acquisition of wholeness in koan is done by actively destroying relationship. Which sounds like fun, doesn't it?
In this section, I will try to explain that the heuristic structure of koan
is like
Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, said that a question and an answer is like a binary machine, or words to that effect. A question is dominant in the way that it restrains the possible answers. A relation is binary too. A difference is always a binary decision of "A" or "non-A."
This affects human perception in the form of abstraction. We cannot recognize anything that does not appear as a phenomenon with a meaning through the mechanism of abstraction. As semiologists say, it is not that we recognize an object first and then we put some meaning to it, but we recognize the pair of object and its meaning at the same time.
The binary machine always affects the way we understand things. Language acquisition and categorization/abstraction happens at the same time for human and they are inseparable.
A set of categories/abstractions becomes common to the members of a specific society. The members of a society share a code. A communication generally requires a shared code, and it always involves the binary machine of a question and an answer. Generally, the communication strengthens the code, or the relationship specific within the code system.
In koan, the communication in a normal sense is broken. In koan, a code is deconstructed, and a rebellion is committed against the binary machine. It is a betrayal. By discovering the answer to the question in koan, a student can derive a betrayal to the binary machine and acquire wholeness.
Here is an example. Hogan (teacher) and Suicho (student) are discussing. Suicho asks, "What is the absolute ego?" Hogan answers, "You are Suicho."
In this koan, Hogan probably said what he was seeing at the time. It was a reference to the process of recognition itself, and he was in fact answering to his student's question directly by a performance. On the other hand, Suicho obtained an answer he wasn't expecting. This may have caused discordance in his perception, which is a good start for exiting from the code system.
Let's think some more about Hogan's answer. "The things currently perceived" are stored in short-term memory. Gilles Deleuze said something like the following: "There isn't only quantitative difference between short-term and long-term memories. Shor-term memory is unstructured and dynamic whereas long-term memory is structured and static." Long-term memory supports the binary machine, while short-term memory helps escaping from it.
Also, Hogan didn't answer by the object-level language. He was rather refering to the language system itself in a way that perception and language are inseparable, and was therefore using a meta-language, a language to talk about languages.
Short-term memory is not necessarily a memory about the present occurings for zen teachers. Choshu, when asked if he was once taught by Nanzen, answered "Huge radishes are produced in Choshu" (Choshu is also a name of a location in China). In other example, he, when asked if everything becomes one what the one becomes, answered "When I was living in Seishu, I made a linen clothing, and its weight was seven kins." These answers are obviously out of context. The knowledges based on which the answers were made (about radishes and his linen clothing) were apparently not accessed by a usual method. I think that was like creating short-term memory out of long-term memory, or producing a dynamic knowledge out of a set of static knowledges. Angela would prefer to say "combine upon discontextualization" as that's what she does in her music.
Why do zen teachers have to give out-of-context answers? "The objective is not to give answers to the questions, but to escape from them, to escape from the questions," Deleuze said (this quote has been combined upon discontextualization). It is a demonstration of a betrayal. The answers by zen teachers do not satisfy the questions from the students, but they sure do answer using meta-languages (in order to refer to the binary machine by the binary machine itself).
When a teacher answers a student's question, a meta-language is always used and the teacher escapes.
Then how about a teacher asking a question to a student? There are many examples like that. In many of them, the teacher asks for something which is physically impossible to do, creating a double-bind situation.
A double-bind occurs when a person is restricted in a situation, but at the same time is restricted by a logic or a language which the person wants to use for escaping from the situation.
An example of a double-bind in koan is the case of the teacher trying to hit the student I explained in the introduction. The student had to escape by realizing that the double-bind situation is a product of relationship and is alterable.
Why do zen teachers have to put students into double-bind situations? I think that's because the teachers want destruction of the existing codes. Anyone who wants to strengthen the code system via communication would not ask questions like that, as the questions do not make any sense within a code-shared community.
Language acquisition is closely related to scientific discoveries. The process of our discovery of something involves acquisition of a new language. For example, a medical student learns to understand what is on an X-ray photograph when he or she learns the language of X-ray photographs. It is a creation of a new relationship, and at the same time is a destruction of the previous relations.
A discovery is never made through a logical thinking. Even a mathematician relies on sudden appearances of "unexpected" solutions after long, logical thoughts. The same goes with zen masters' process of acquiring enlightenment.
Discovery and humour are also closely related with each other. As I wrote before, communication is mainly done within a code-shared community in order to strengthen the code system. However, the communication is partially done in order to deconstruct the code system so that the system won't get stagnated. This is done by discovery or humour.
Both discovery and humour are often ununderstandable at first by the majority of a society, because they are not based on the existing code system. People who often discover things or like to practice humour, whether they know it or not, have excessive energy to destroy the code system - they just have to do it. The same probably goes with zen practitioners and that is the reason why many zen behaviours are funny.
The common impression I have about the cutting edge scientists, comedians and zen masters is that they act like children. In fact, concepts to indicate that being childish and acquisition of wholeness are related have been proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: the childhood's block and the body without organs (CsO). CsO is indeed a childhood's block, and it is the opposite of the childhood's memory. It is a childhood and an adulthood simultaneously happening. CsO is the wholeness.
If I may divide the life of a person into the childhood and the adulthood, the adulthood is when the person lives in accordance with the surrounding society's code system. Whereas the childhood is when the person is less bound by the code system (a very young child would take the $1 bank note, don't you think?). In order to acquire the wholeness by unifying the two, the adult person must revive the childhood at present. It is not a childhood's memory (from long-term memory), but the simultaneous appearance of the adulthood and the childhood (on short-term memory). By doing so, the existing code system becomes broken, and a discovery, a humour or an enlightenment is made. The childhood before the adulthood, which does not require any heuristics, is not CsO.
We must note that even CsO is an abstraction, and inevitably becomes a part of the existing code system. This is the reason why the scientists, comedians and zen practitioners continue their mind odyssey in search of another CsO.
