The sound of one hand clapping

 

Four monks were meditating in a monastery at dawn when the prayer flag on the roof started flapping.  Hearing the sound, the youngest monk came out of his meditation and said, “The flag is flapping”. 

There was silence for a few minutes before a more experienced monk opened his eyes and said, “The wind is flapping”. 

An hour passed, then a third monk who had been in the monastery for 20 years, broke his concentration and said, “The mind is flapping”. 

No one said anything till almost noon.  By that time the fourth monk who was the eldest among them, had got pretty annoyed by the constant chatter going on around him which was disturbing his deep focus.  Momentarily emerging into normal wakefulness he snapped, “Mouths are flapping”.

            It sounded so much like a brilliant Zen koan (parable) that all four monks were instantly shaken out of their reverie and became completely awake, but they all still kept their eyes tightly shut and pretended to be continuing with the meditation.

            This first monk thought:  What a fool I was to have made such a dumb comment on the spur of the moment without realizing any of its deeper implications.  Just goes to show what a moron I am and how much hard work lies ahead of me before I can even spell the word nirvana.  Of course, the flag was not flapping.  God, what was I thinking!

            The second monk thought:  And there was I thinking I had made a big fat philosophical comment on this idiot’s naïve misinterpretation of a simple phenomenon.  All I have succeeded in doing is making a complete ass of me in front of everyone.  Someone ought to kick me continuously for three years.

            The third monk thought:  Man, I really blew it big time today, did not I?  Here we are being taught that the mind does not exist, and there I am going around the countryside proclaiming to the whole world that actually its flapping—like it’s a prayer flag on the roof or something!  I must be having the brains of a prawn. 

            The fourth monk thought:  Have I got secretly enlightened or what that I am suddenly beginning to mouth such rot?  Come to think of it, it is not even all that funny after the first reading.  What is the bet history is going to remember me as the guy who took the Bodhidharma back to the west from where he had come?

            By nightfall, the wind had died down completely.  As the monks prepared to retire, the youngest monk hearing no sound, said, “Oh look, now nothing is flapping!”