{"id":169,"date":"2005-10-10T14:11:32","date_gmt":"2005-10-10T22:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/wordpress\/?p=169"},"modified":"2005-10-10T14:11:32","modified_gmt":"2005-10-10T22:11:32","slug":"shuzans-koan-of-the-shippe-or-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/10\/shuzans-koan-of-the-shippe-or-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Shuzan's Koan of the Shippe or Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey, I'll be reading a story on KFJC<\/a> bright and early Tuesday morning again.<\/p>\n

'GigaDial<\/a><\/p>\n


\n
Yesterday I mentioned using a koan in an SF story as a way of jumping between the material and aethereal layers of reality. Shuzan's koan of the shippe (short bamboo staff) seems like a good one to use. I looked for it online and first found this form.<\/p>\n

(Form 1) Shuzan held out his short staff and said, “If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?” [Text found in an online koan collection<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Note that in traditional Zen teaching, the penalty for a poor answer was a hard whack on the head with a short bamboo staff like Shuzan held.<\/p>\n

The commentary on this koan says, “It cannot be expressed with words and it cannot be expressed without words. Now say quickly what it is.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

All the other online refs quote the same text — a weakness of online info. So I went the dead-tree route. D. T. Suzuki describes some variations on this koan in Essays in Zen Buddhism<\/i> (1961 Grove Press, NY) which sits on my bookcase.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[The Suzuki picture is from a cool Neobuddhism <\/a> site.]<\/p>\n

(Form 2) The masters generally go about with a kind of short [bamboo] stick known as a shippe, or at least they did so in old China. It does not matter whether it is a shippe or not; anything, in fact will answer our purpose. Shuzan, a noted Zen master of the tenth century, held out his stick and said to a group of his disciples: “Call it not a shippe; if you do, you assert. Nor do you deny its being a shippe; if you do, you negate. Apart from affirmation and negation, speak, speak!” Suzuki, p, 275.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Form 3) Ummon expressed the same idea with his staff, which he held up, saying: “What is this? If you say it is a staff, you go right to hell; but it is not a staff, what is it?” Suzuki, p. 276.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Form 4) Ummon once lifted his staff before a congregation and remarked: “In the scriptures we read that the ignorant take this for a real thing, the Hinayanists resolve it into a nonentity, the Pratyekabuddhas regard it as a hallucination, while the Bodhisattvas admit its apparent reality, which is, however, essentially empty. But, monks, you simply call it a staff when you see one. Walk or sit as you will, but do not stand irresolute.” Suzuki, p. 34.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, I'll be reading a story on KFJC bright and early Tuesday morning again. Yesterday I mentioned using a koan in an SF story as a way of jumping between the material and aethereal layers of reality. Shuzan's koan of the shippe (short bamboo staff) seems like a good one to use. I looked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}