Tokusan Holds His Bowl (Gateless Barrier 13)

The Case:
One day Tokusan came towards the refectory from the Meditation Hall, carrying his bowls. Seppo called out to him, “Where are you off to with your bowls, when the bell has not rung and the drum has not been struck.” Tokusan went at once back to his room. Seppo told this occurrence to Ganto, who remarked, “Tokusan though he is, he has no penetrated into the deepest truth, the last word of Zen.” Hearing of this, Tokusan sent an acolyte to ask Ganto to come, and said to him, “Have you any criticism to make of me?” Ganto whispered his meaning to him. Saying nothing Tokusan took leave of him. The next day ascending the rostrum, Tokusan was different then before. Ganto, going towards the front of the Hall, clapping his hands and laughing, said, “What a happy thing! The old man has got the last word of Zen. From now onwards nobody will be able to take a rise out of him!”

The Commentary:
As for what is called “The Last Word of Zen”, neither Ganto nor Tokusan ever heard of such a thing. When you look into the matter, they’re only a set of puppets.

The Verse:
If you understand the first word of Zen
You understand the last;
But these two words
Are not one word.

A Limerick:
Supposing that all this was fake,
there's no such thing as a mistake.
If it was all real,
it's much the same deal:
the First and Last Word, give or take.

Me:
Completely lost on this one. I'm relying on Blythe's comments to work from a supposition that Tokusan (an elderly Zen master) and Ganto (a young man not yet a reknowned Zen person of some kind) either implicitly or explicitly conspired to make a point aimed at Setto. What point? Even the commentators who agree there was a conspiracy of some kind here don't agree on what the point was. I like articulating it as "Even when you see everything you need to see to form a judgment, you know nothing you need to know to form a judgment." More technically: Accurate perception is not tied to accurate prediction." More prosaically: "You can know everything and never have a clue." That's as close to anything "zen" I can get to from the story itself--and it's not very close.

What can I do with this? Watch for surprises in things I feel mastery over.

You:
?

Submitted January 13, 2020 at 06:34AM by Porn_Steal https://ift.tt/2taYkwh