Muddy Road’s Unexpected Question, Essay Example

I used to think that k?ans (or “parables”) were neat little self-contained lessons with neat little surprises in each one. I now realize that this is not always the case. There can be unintended surprises as well. That’s my first Zen lesson.

It’s easy to spot two outward forms of unexpected behavior in this k?an:  Tanzan suddenly and bodily picks up a young and attractive girl to carry her over a muddy road. Even to readers unfamiliar with the ways Zen masters, it seems a bit out of character. Aren’t monks supposed to be passive? Sir Walter Raleigh–style chivalry isn’t in their line. And since mud isn’t essential, you can imagine Tanzan passing the girl by with a tidy proverb about humility and fate. But Tanzan’s answering question to Ekido is itself unexpected behavior because it is so perfect. In a flash it instructs both Ekido and the reader to view the situation in another way. We both see what we didn’t see before: that the act of putting the girl back down is the flip side of picking her up. Tanzan teaches Ekido and readers a new way to see. But wait, there’s more.

What did Tanzan teach the girl? This is perfect Zen because it isn’t there until you ask the question, at which point it is unavoidable. The story is fiction so there is no definite answer. Maybe the only right one is to ask another question, like Tanzan asked Ekido. That must be the way of Zen: to answer a question that has no definite answer, you must direct the mind in an unexpected direction to a definite conclusion, and do it as sharply as possible. But to do that takes a Tanzan, not a Ekido. Which are you, reader?