One of the most famous koans next to “Does a dog have the Buddha Nature” is: “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” This Koan comes from the Zen master Hakuin and is commonly misquoted as: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
When Zen master Michael Elliston gave his talk about Zen he explained this to us, and although I would not describe this as a moment of “enlightenment” I felt a moment of sudden understanding for this Koan. The simple knowledge of the word clapping not being a part of the koan was not the only reason for this feeling of understanding. At the start of the talk Abbot Elliston explained the bowing motion done by Buddhist. He explained how one hand represented the Buddha nature and the …show more content…
The way I understood this koan was that the sound of one hand is nothing, and more specifically using a Buddhist term, mu. Mu not necessarily meaning nothing or no, but more over nothingness or emptiness. Emptiness relates to the concept of dependent origination in that nothing exists in and of itself. Everything exists only because of a series of causes and conditions and then ceases to exist because of other cause and conditions. So in the case of this koan both hands when together make the sound that is commonly known as clapping, but when there is only one hand it cannot make a sound. The sound of clapping is inherently empty in that it depends on both hands coming together for there to be any sound at all. So the sound of one hand is nothing, and in a sense, an illogical question. This may well be the purpose of the koan. Although I am not sure the exact history of the bow described by Michael Elliston, it seems likely that the way he described it is the way it has been since Hakuin first asked this koan. (Whether or not this is actually the case is irrelevant to the insight that it has given me in trying to understand this koan.) To me they seem to go together. If the purpose of …show more content…
The idea of one hand representing the Buddha nature and one hand representing the self as we know it is not explicitly addressed in the question of what is the sound of one hand. This may be because it does not matter which hand it is because both hands are inherently the same. If there was a sound of one hand, then the hand representing the Buddha nature would make the same sound as the hand representing the current self. This further expresses the oneness of the Buddha nature and the current self even though it is not even mentioned. As I had said earlier this also represents the dependent nature of reality, but when comparing the koan to the meaning behind the bow this becomes even more apparent. In the case of the bow the hands come together in the same way hands come together when clapping, just slower without the actual sound. (Could this also have a meaning?). The meaning of the bow depends on the hands coming together the same way the sound of a clap depends on the hand coming together. Someone contemplating this koan may also think “What is the nature of one hand” then the follow up question would be “Which hand,