22 Feb Koan 8

What is it now?*

One day, a Zen master with a clay pot on a wooden table before him asked several students: “What is this?”

Some said it was a clay pot. Another said that it was an artifact. Another said it was an assemblage of clay and wood. Soon there were other perspectives as well. A lively debate ensued, while the Zen master shook his head and laughed.

One student approached the table and threw the pot to the ground where it cracked into many pieces. An audible silence enveloped the room until the student asked: “What is it now?”

Silence again filled the room. Some students were shocked and others embarrassed by the aggressive arrogance of the student who shattered their master’s clay pot. The silence was shattered by laughter from the Zen master and the student.

The Zen master and student laughed as they recognized the other students were like the blind men in the “Ten Men and the Elephant” parable. Each certain of their personal view and the collective view that breaking the pot was respecting their master.

A pot is a pot temporarily. All things are ever-changing. The pot cannot be described, as it is different now than it was in the now before now.

The pot, like every thing, does not have an independent existence. It is simply a facet of the temporary expression of the Everything. Ultimately, it is what it is whatever it is.

“What is it now?” begs the question: “What is now?”

*Courtesy of Bill Wisher.