What is the sound of one hand clapping?

From a Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber

You know the Zen koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Usually, of course, we need two hands to clap—and that is the structure of typical experience. We have a sense of ourselves as a subject in here, and the world as an object out there. We have these “two hands” of experience, the subject and the object. And typical experience is a smashing of these two hands together to make a commotion, a sound. The object out there smashes into me as a subject, and I have an experience—the two hands clap together, and experience emerges.

And so the typical structure of experience is like a punch in the face. The ordinary self is the battered self—it is utterly battered by the universe “out there.” The ordinary self is a series of bruises, of scars, the results of these two hands of experience smashing together. This bruising is called duhkha, suffering. As Krishmamurti used to say, in that gap between the subject and the object lies the entire misery of humankind.

But with the nondual state, suddenly there are not two hands. Suddenly, the subject and the object are one hand. Suddenly, there is nothing outside of you to smash into you, bruise you, torment you.


Suddenly, you do not have an experience, you are every experience that arises, and so you are instantly released into all space: you and the entire Kosmos are one hand, one experience, one display, one gesture of great Perfection. There is nothing outside of you that you can want, or desire, or seek, or grasp—your soul expands to the corners of the universe and embraces all with infinite delight. You are utterly full, utterly saturated, so full and saturated that the boundaries to the Kosmos completely explode and leave you without date or duration, time or location, awash in an ocean of infinite care. You are released into the All, as the All—you are the self-seen radiant Kosmos, you are the universe of One Taste, and the taste is utterly infinite.

So what is the sound of that one hand clapping? What is the taste of that One Taste? When there is nothing outside of you that can hit you, hurt you, push you, pull you—what is the sound of that one hand clapping?

Continued…

2 Responses

Mark Chilver says on September 28, 2011 at 12:58 pm

This is the first Koan I ever heard. Over 25 years ago. (I wont tell you how much over that ;-)

I didnt get it. Of course.

What Ken describes is not understood by the logic of reason. The Thinking mind.

It is rather what comes from Vertical realisation not the horizontal thinking we are used to.

It is sudden and profound. It simply appears.

It is what happens when the conscious thinking mind disappears, or is suspended.

When that sense of personal self is suspended.

As can happen with a sunset. Or looking at the ocean. Or hearing the wind in the trees.

Or on the birth of a child, Alexandra ;-)

When “we” disappear, then that which lies behind our mind, or before it, or is even the ground of it, emerges.

That is non personal, not “yours” or “his” or “hers”. It is the so called Awareness out of which personal consciousness comes.

And it is why all the masters talk of Silence, of simply being, of being Still to find the Truth.

Or between the gaps in your thoughts. Or in the emptiness between objects, or experiences.

It is the Matrix of all experience. It is doing “us” all the time.

It IS Time. And it has no name or form. It is the Subject without an object.

Ha ha ha. Words come only after appearances arise. And they cannot describe what is before words, or sound.

Which is ……. Mu, as the great Zen Masters would say.

Beyond and before mind.

It is You before this little you (the mind’s image of “you” as a body and sensations), knows “you” are.

And that is the sound of One hand clapping.

;-)

Alexandra says on September 25, 2011 at 9:28 am

I saw the question and the reply in a great movie, named The White Elephant…there the monk said is the same sound made by the birth of a child, or the dead of an emperor, so on and so forth.