Ekaku Hakuin teaches that learning through Kōans (a paradoxical anecdote or riddle) and doubting can lead to enlightenment. That it is only by using Kōans and doubting things that we look at objectively, can we find what we are truly looking for. I relate this to everyday life. It is easy to get swept up in the flow of everyday life, taking things as they are, as face value, and not questioning things when they need to be questioned. For example, throughout most of primary and secondary school, we are taught that everything has an answer. Everything can be answered logically, simply, and in one explanation. Well, that might be so for test taking, but in life, there is not simply one right answer.
Hakuins more famous analogy for this was his question to a student, “What is the sound of one …show more content…
74) …. But then Gollum could do the same with the hobbit’s expected answer to the riddle. He could point out that teeth are not ‘white horses’ and the gums are neither red nor a hill, that teeth do not ‘stamp’ (feet stamp, not teeth) or even ‘stand still’ (it is the jaw that moves or becomes still, not the teeth—and even so it is unidiomatic to say the jaw ‘stands still’). He could then reject the riddle as nonsense. Why then does he not do this? The answer is because we accept that a riddle must be understood in a liberal and metaphorical way….” 2
Why do we not question that riddle that has been presented before us? Like Giles states, we try to find a literal way to answer the Kōan, like we can a riddle. However, the biggest different between an Kōan and a riddle is that there is no right or wrong answer, much like life. We cannot pass through our lives believing that there is a “right thing to do”, or a “right answer”, even if that may be what we all striving to
Hakuins more famous analogy for this was his question to a student, “What is the sound of one …show more content…
74) …. But then Gollum could do the same with the hobbit’s expected answer to the riddle. He could point out that teeth are not ‘white horses’ and the gums are neither red nor a hill, that teeth do not ‘stamp’ (feet stamp, not teeth) or even ‘stand still’ (it is the jaw that moves or becomes still, not the teeth—and even so it is unidiomatic to say the jaw ‘stands still’). He could then reject the riddle as nonsense. Why then does he not do this? The answer is because we accept that a riddle must be understood in a liberal and metaphorical way….” 2
Why do we not question that riddle that has been presented before us? Like Giles states, we try to find a literal way to answer the Kōan, like we can a riddle. However, the biggest different between an Kōan and a riddle is that there is no right or wrong answer, much like life. We cannot pass through our lives believing that there is a “right thing to do”, or a “right answer”, even if that may be what we all striving to