Achilles: Well, there is one problem. Although both are widely told koans,
my master has cautioned me that only one of them is genuine. And
what is more, he does not know which one is genuine, and which one is
a fraud.
Tortoise: Crazy! Why don't you tell them both to me and we can speculate
to our hearts' content!
Achilles: All right. One of the alleged koans goes like this:
A monk asked Baso: "What is Buddha?"
Baso said: "This mind is Buddha."
Tortoise: Hmm ... "This mind is Buddha"? Sometimes I don't quite
understand what these Zen people are getting at.
Achilles: You might prefer the other alleged koan then.
Tortoise: How does it run?
Achilles: Like this:
A monk asked Baso: "What is Buddha?"
Baso said: "This mind is not Buddha."
Tortoise: My, my! If my shell isn't green and not green! I like that!
Achilles: Now, Mr. T -you're not supposed to just "like" koans.
Tortoise: Very well, then-I don't like it.
Achilles: That's better. Now as I was saying, my master believes only one of
the two is genuine.
Tortoise: I can't imagine what led him to such a belief. But anyway, I
suppose it's all academic, since there's no way to know if a koan is
genuine or phony.
Achilles: Oh, but there you are mistaken. My master has shown us how to
do it.
Tortoise: Is that so? A decision procedure for genuineness of koans? I
should very much like to hear ahout THAT.
Achilles: It is a fairly complex ritual, involving two stages. In the first stage,
you must TRANSLATE the koan in question into a piece of string, folded
all around in three dimensions.
Tortoise: That's a curious thing to do. And what is the second stage?
Achilles: Oh, that's easy-all you need to do is determine whether the
string has Buddha-nature, or not! If it does, then the koan is
genuine-if not, the koan is a fraud.
Tortoise: Hmm ... It sounds as if all you've done is transfer the need for a
decision procedure to another domain. Now it's a decision procedure
for Buddha-nature that you need. What next? After all, if you can't
even tell whether a DOG has Buddha-nature or not, how can you expect
to do so for every possible folded string?
Achilles: Well, my master explained to me that shifting between domains
can help. It's like switching your point of view. Things sometimes look
complicated from one angle, but simple from another. He gave the
example of an orchard, in which from one direction no order is
(^234) A M u Offering