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Sunday Morning Zen

Posted by Jacques Chester on Sunday, May 25, 2008

Zen Koans — part question, part anecdotes — tend to follow a common form. A student asks a master a question; or several students argue something amongst themselves. Some sort of illogical conclusion is reached, at which point somebody is enlightened.

So far, so good. But even extremely advanced and obscurantist mysticism is subject to people taking the piss:

Three Zen students came out of a Dharma talk.

“What did you think of Roshi’s talk today?” one of them asked. “When he talked about true and false practice, I thought that was kind of dualistic, wasn’t it?”

“Ah,” said the second, “but your even saying that is dualistic itself, don’t you see?”

“Look who’s talking,” said the third. “I’m glad I’m not dualistic like you guys!”

From the rather hilarious Broken Koans collection.



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3 Responses to “Sunday Morning Zen”

  1. Dave Bath said:

    I’d highly recommend The Tao of Programming

    3.3 is one of my favorites, even though not strictly koan-like (many bits of the T of P are):

    There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: “Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?”

    “An operating system”, replied the programmer.

    The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. “Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system”, he said.

    “Not so,” said the programmer, “when designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design.”

    The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. “That is all good and well, but which is easier to debug?”

    The programmer made no reply.

    Posted on 25-May-08 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
  2. Andrew said:

    The Broken Koans link seems to be, very appropriately, broken.

    I can’t think of anything more Zen than a link that goes nowhere. But I’m not sure that it’s what you intended.

    Posted on 25-May-08 at 8:05 pm | Permalink
  3. David said:

    I was driving home last night, listening to Rachael Kohn (who’s normally really annoying) discussing, among other things, “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones”, and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. It was a pleasant change from her usual new-agey stuff (although there was a bit of that too), as her guests were unusually interesting.

    Posted on 26-May-08 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

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