OLD JAPAN: ONE HAND CLAP

I tour the 88 temples of Shikoku, and stop at the last for Koans with a fellow Zen Master, the venerable Sooti. Koans disentangle mental processes and invite the absolute down into the everyday.

Sooti puzzles over my Koan, which suggests that my Benjo talks to me at night, secretly. “You can’t say you have not heard of this phenomenon? I ask. When he shakes his head, I nod: The secret is safe then!” Sooti nods back beaming: now he has known Buddha nature.

After sipping some freshly whisked tea; with no water, no whisk and no tea; he tells me the Koan of the cats in Konan Province: “They call bingo Mousey-Mousey!” he relates.

My brow furrows: “Surely not, “I murmur.

Alright then, question them,” cries Sooti. “No cat will contradict this.”

My brow unfurrows to let my third eye open: he has emptied the cup. Ah Satori! The Zendo fills with the sound of one hand clapping as we don’t applaud each other.

© Mike Atkinson