Koans are small and hard. They are crystalline in their difficulty. I find this interesting as an argument that is sometimes used against poetry (see the current disagreement between Geoffrey Hill and Carol Ann Duffy). My own feeling is that, like a koan, a poem should be a place where simplicity and complexity meet.
I admire koans for the tension that exists between this simplicity of language and the difficulty of the meaning. Koans point beyond language and existing concepts but can never quite connect with what they point to. A Zen buddhist might argue that there is no defined meaning to connect with, the koan points to a place which is beyond meaning. They are, I think, partly intended to stretch our minds so that we become comfortable with uncertainty: something we should be more used to by now.
Both artforms do their work at the frontier between language and reality. Poetry is a word-forge, a place where meaning is created; a koan's purpose is to dismantle concepts that obstruct our way of seeing. They have an opposite but equivalent way of reaching the fundamental. This is the struggle of language: it is most often used to superimpose meaning on the world, but the more accurate usage is always to allude.
If you're going to write about the infinite, it's best to be concise about it. You should try to knit everything together in a single knot. Don't worry, something will always be left untied. If you're writing in prose*, clean, simple language and bright, strong nouns are the way forward. Remember that the target is infinitely small and infinitely large. If you imitate the formless sprawl of your subject, you'll miss the mark many times and be far wide of it. A single near miss is better.
Here are a couple of koans I have thought about lately:
No Water, No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
- In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
from http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/cgi-bin/koan-index.plJoshu Washes the Bowl
A monk told Joshu: `I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.' Joshu asked: `Have you eaten your rice porridge?'Mumon's Comment: Joshu is the man who opens his mouth and shows his heart. I doubt if this monk really saw Joshu's heart. I hope he did not mistake the bell for a pitcher.
The monk replied: `I have eaten.'
Joshu said: `Then you had better wash your bowl.'
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A dunce once searched for fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.
*Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves makes an admirable attempt of mimicking a limitless labyrinth underneath a suburban house. At one point, he shifts to a Zen-like tactic of negation to describe all the architectural styles that the labyrinth does not resemble.
