Is Zen like a joke you can't tell?

I was recently thinking about the old nerd joke:

'There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't'

You often see it on t-shirts.

In a way, this is a joke you can't tell. Of course, it can obviohsly be told in text, so in that way it's not akin to the way I'm likening it to Zen here. Also, I don't think of Zen as a joke, even though it can be uproariously funny.

But if you try to tell someone this joke when talking. '10' when pronounced has to come out as 'two'. Any other way of saying it, like 'one zero' or something also doesn't carry the joke. So in some strange way, it can't be put into spoken words.

You can explain the joke to people, but you can't tell it to them. And a joke you have to explain is never funny because the other person didn't actually get the joke.

Zen Masters avoid explaining their joke. They can't even tell people the joke, so why bother explaining it?

It's like a joke you have to find for yourself.

As for the people who found the joke, it looks like they spend the rest of their lives laughing about it and making in jokes to their friends who also got the joke.

Must be one good Joke, wouldn't you like to know it?

Submitted March 27, 2023 at 01:59PM by dota2nub https://ift.tt/wps92uX