FIGURE 45. La Mezquita, by M. C. Escher (bln,ck and white chalk, 1936).apparent, but from special angles, beautiful regularity emerges.
You've reordered the same information by changing your way of
looking at it.
Tortoise: I see. So perhaps the genuineness of a koan is concealed some-
how very deeply inside it, but if you translate it into a string it manages
in some way to float to the surface?
Achilles: That's what my master has discovered.
Tortoise: Then I would very much like to learn about the technique. But
first, tell me: how can you turn a koan (a sequence of words) into a
folded string (a three-dimensional object)? They are rather different
kinds of entities.
Achilles: That is one of the most mysterious things I have learned in Zen.
There are two steps: "transcription" and "translation". TRANSCRIBING
a koan involves writing it in a phonetic alphabet, which contains only
four geometric symbols. This phonetic rendition of the koan is called
the MESSENGER.
Tortoise: What do the geometric symbols look like?
Achilles: They are made of hexagons and pentagons. Here is what they
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