Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Well, it’s ancient (the thread, I mean … but the koan, too).
So, is everyone’s best read on this koan that Ch’ang-sha’s answers are just pure gobbledygook? As in, the exchange may as well have gone,
If so, then the whole point is that there’s no point asking such a question?
Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick.
A zombie, who steps forward from the top of a 100 foot pole, will lose his Buddha nature.
Zombies don’t have Buddha nature, so they have nothing to lose.
Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me away from Mu, girl.
Very cute.
All of the versions thus far are at least partial rephrasings of the original. The original koan, as mentioned upthread, is #46 in the mumonkan, or “The gateless gate,” which is a collection of 48 Chan buddhist koans that were assembled in China by a guy named Wumen Huikai in the early 1200s.
Before discussing the specific koan, I think it’s relevant to comment briefly on the role of koan in Chan buddhism: koan have developed a reputation in the west of entailing nonsense answers, or of constituting some kind of test, but neither is accurate. Chan buddhism as a practice asserts that most people have a flawed and inaccurate experience of reality, and emphasizes the use of meditation to develop stability and mental faculty to experience the world objectively. This state of objective awareness of the nature of all things is both ineffable and individual, and efforts to describe them directly are considered to be a waste of time at best, and misleading at worst. As such, koan originally evolved as a tool with which to express one’s experience of reality, allowing teachers to efficiently share their experience of the practice with students.
Owing to the emphasis on subjectivity, the original koan practice intended each teacher to compose their own koan, as suited their teaching style and the temperament of their individual students. However, by the late 800s it had become fashionable to reproduce particularly clever koan, often those composed by well-known teachers, and by the time the 1200s rolled around reproducing koan was quite common.
Going back to the specific koan in question, #46 in the collection entitled The Gateless Gate, the original text is as follows:
石霜和尚云、百尺竿頭、如何進歩。
[a prominent historical teacher] asked “When standing on top of a 100-foot pole, how can you proceed further?”
又古徳云、百尺竿頭坐底人、雖然得入未爲眞。
Another highly regarded teacher replied "When you sit on the top of a 100-foot pole, although you have entered the way you are not [fully realized/qualified as a teacher or master]
百尺竿頭、須進歩十方世界現全身。
Walk from the top of the pole, and you will spread your body in the ten directions
This is technically the end of the Koan, but six additional lines follow it, a two-line commentary and a four-line section of verse follow.
By the standards of the time, this particular koan belonged to a specific literary category of koan, to wit “questions without answers”. Koan in this category were not intended to be answered by the student- rather, by analyzing the organization of meanings, interrelation of terms, and both the symbolism and the statement made by the specific contradictory or seemingly random concepts that the koan groups together, a student can begin working out the specific nature of mind and manifestation of reality the author described.
Wumen Huikai, the author, tended to adopt a very contradictory and chaotic persona in his writings, and this follows suit, as the entire koan is essentially saying that when someone stands on the top of a high pole, if they are a logical person they step up (onto an imaginary step, which doesn’t actually exist) without hesitation.
Of course, most of this is completely useful on a practical level without a teacher- koan themselves lead to no great progress, what is important is the interaction between teacher and student, which koan were originally created to facilitate.
Taken literally, this is exactly what would happen.
So, you’re on a 100 foot pole… now what?
What’s next, a 1,000 foot pole? Where do you go from there?
Have you achieved the immortality of the mountains and rivers, yet? Guess not.
Have you conquered all you survey like some great king? Nope.
So, genius. You’ve gone as far as you can on the pole. Have you achieved enlightenment yet? If not, don’t move until you do. If yes, step off, 'cause you’re done, son, and it’s time to either ascend or be reborn.