A Discerning Eye

Do koans have answers? Without a doubt, yes. Can koans be answered however you like or explained away casually? Without a doubt, no. Do koans have a single correct answer? No — there can be many correct ways to respond, but all of them share an inner key point, an inherent consistency and coherence. A rough mathematical analogy: with N equations and N+1 unknowns, there are infinitely many solutions, yet all of them lie along a single line. That's the kind of consistency and coherence we're talking about. You can't just grab any random set of numbers and call it a solution.

Do the words and actions of Chan masters in koans carry meaning? Of course. But is that meaning the master's own intent, or something the student reads into it, or even something later generations tacked on? The words and actions of Chan masters in koans do have clear meaning, and clear-eyed masters often anticipate and gauge the associations a student might form before they act. Later generations — especially from the Ming and Qing onward — have indeed layered on plenty of unfounded interpretations, but these can be identified and set aside.

Chan masters often say that to understand the methods of the old masters, you need a discerning eye. Today, to recognize the correct interpretation of a koan, we need that same eye. It's actually not that hard to judge whether an interpretation is right: a correct explanation always has a certain coherence. Think of a jigsaw puzzle — it's not difficult to tell whether the pieces fit. A properly assembled puzzle has an overall coherence, while random guesswork might get a few local details right but will never come together as a whole. Let's take an extremely famous koan as an example: "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?" This question appears dozens of times in koan collections, and there are dozens of recorded answers from renowned, clear-eyed masters. Here are a handful, listed at random:

• Mazu: "I'm tired today. I can't explain it to you."
• Xitang Zhizang: "I have a headache today. Go ask Huaihai."
• Mazu: Struck the questioner in the face and said, "Six ears can't scheme together."
• Mazu: "What is the meaning of right now?"
• Linji: "This old monk is washing his feet." Zhaozhou made a gesture as though listening attentively.
• Zhaozhou: "The cypress seeds in the courtyard."
• Shishuang: Gritted his teeth.
• Weishan: "Bring my bed over here." Then struck the questioner.
• Yunmen: "There's porridge and rice on the long platform."
• Fenyang: "A blue silk fan is cool enough."
• Cuiwei: "Hand me the meditation board." The moment he took it, he struck the questioner.
• Cuiwei: Stared at the other person for a good long while.
• Luopu: Struck the meditation platform with his fly whisk and said, "Do you understand?"

Each master's response is different, and they can look bewildering at first glance. Later generations' explanations are even more varied, and only add to the confusion. But with a discerning eye, you can see that behind all these responses, there's a single shared key point.

A core part of Chan training is observing your own mind — mainly catching your own self-deception, so you don't get tricked by mental appearances without realizing it. For instance, from the perspective of mind, there is no such thing as a "past mind." What exists is only the present mind remembering — what's called dharma dust. There's no "future mind" either; there's only the present mind spinning out thoughts and projections — also dharma dust. The present mind alone, though ultimately insubstantial, is the only place where you can actually get to work. So in Chan training, students are conditionally allowed to work with the present flow of consciousness. Past and future minds are dismissed outright — as nonexistent as turtle hair or rabbit horns, pure fabrication.

The question "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?" asks about the intention of an ancient patriarch. That intention never existed in the past, nor will it ever arise in the mind of the student asking the question. What arises in the student's mind is the present flow of consciousness grasping at the past. So the question is entirely delusional. Accordingly, nearly all the masters' responses cut off this kind of thinking dead in its tracks, while seizing the moment to bring the student's attention back to what's right in front of them — the present flow of consciousness.

Once you understand this, you can see that every one of the responses listed above interrupts the questioner's train of thought and forces them to feel what's happening right now. Even Zhaozhou's famous "The cypress seeds in the courtyard" is simply pointing the questioner to look at the cypress seeds — calling them back to what they're doing in the present moment. And those who strike the questioner outright are using pain to snap them into direct experience of the present.

A small number of masters, rather than guiding the questioner into the present flow of consciousness, just berate them for their wandering thoughts. This also cuts off delusion, but as a way of guiding students, it lacks the warm, painstaking care of the other kind of response.

One particularly wonderful case: Zhaozhou went to see Linji and asked him this very question. Both were renowned masters, and neither could have been ignorant of the correct response — so their exchange is especially telling. When Zhaozhou asked, "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?", Linji didn't try to correct him. Both knew the other was clear-eyed — what was there to correct? So Linji simply expressed his own present state: "This old monk is washing his feet!" Zhaozhou's response was to make a gesture as if listening attentively — equally an expression of the present flow of consciousness. Linji then said, "What do you want with this second ladle of dirty water?" On the surface, that sounds like an insult. But what Linji was really saying was: what you just expressed is exactly what I expressed — what's the point of saying it twice? In the koan record, Zhaozhou turns and leaves. Since the two were in perfect accord, their minds confirmed in mutual recognition, it was only natural for Zhaozhou to continue on his way.

At this point, the "Patriarch's coming from the West" koan has no secrets left. Most readers will have a fairly clear understanding of how this koan functions in the Chan tradition — it's nothing like the mysterious, arcane, even bizarre thing that later embellishments have made it out to be. The koan has lost its mystique and its pull; you could say it's been used up. And that's one of the drawbacks of laying bare the core of koans openly. Can readers actually benefit from this? Hard to say. Intellectual understanding is not the same as resolving real problems in your own mental conduct. Grasping this famous koan on the level of thought doesn't mean you can actually break through your deluded attachment to past and future. This is exactly why the Chan tradition doesn't value intellectual understanding and focuses solely on practice. It comes down to the difference between knowing something intimately and merely knowing about it.