01 Mar Koan 12

Is that so?

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. One day, her parents discovered she was pregnant.

This angered her parents, especially as she refused to tell them who got her pregnant. Eventually, she told them Hakuin was the father.

Furious, the parents told everyone in the community what Hakuin had done and confronted the master.

“Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born, the parents gave it to Hakuin. By then, he had lost his reputation as a righteous man, but that did not trouble him. He accepted the child and took very good care of it.

A year later, the baby’s mother could no longer hold back the truth. She told her parents the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.

The girl’s parents immediately went to Hakuin and apologized. They asked for forgiveness and to have the child back.

Hakuin willingly gave them the child and all he said was: “Is that so?”

“Is that so?,” like koans generally, encourages self-reflection and the questioning of assumptions we hold without doubts. However, unlike other koans, it isn’t disguised as a paradox or absurd riddle.

“Is that so?” Hakuin asks the girl’s parents to question their initial certainty that Hakuin fathered their daughter’s baby and their later certainty that he did not. Unlike the girl’s parents, we, the readers of this anecdote, don’t know who fathered the baby. Maybe the girl’s parents don’t know either.

“Is that so?” simply suggests we consider things from many perspectives. This is the essence of wisdom.

Wisdom is knowing that perceived truths change (like the girl’s claim as to who fathered her baby) and that, ultimately, no thing is truly knowable. This is the same conclusion we come to when considering paradoxes and absurd riddles.

The girl’s parents lack wisdom. They also lack compassion as they carelessly ruin Hakuin’s reputation.

Hakuin, a man of wisdom and compassion, knows what he is and is unfazed by who others think he is.

When we embody wisdom and compassion, we gracefully accept what comes our way and make the best of it.