DJ Duk

February 19, 2007

Today's Pun...

What does a Buddhist eat on a hot day? An Ice-cream Koan.

I'm used to unfavorable responses for my puns. Its one of the dangers of punning. But this pun hasn't gotten me the hate I so richly deserve. I've used this pun twice today, and in the presence of people well known for pun hatred (my mother stabbed me with a fork for 'What do kind of party does a gibbering madness God from the bottom of the sea throw? A Cthu-luau.' She disapproves of H.P. Lovecraft and puns) and gotten no response at all. As it turns out, nobody else knows what a Koan is. So as always, I swing into action.

A Koan is a story or a question designed to encourage intuition over logical thought. Koan questions typically cannot be answered logically and must be perceived in another way. Koans are used as teaching and meditation tools in the Buddhist tradition. One of the most famous Koan is often stated as "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" While many of us are compelled to answer "swish" the purpose of the question isn't really to generate an answer, instead the Buddhist student is supposed gain enlightenment by thinking about it in a non-logical way.

This may explain Chinese martial arts. I, at least, find this concept tremendously frustrating. I can only imagine Hume skewering such questions on the end of his fork firmly as nonsense (not now Bailey, I'll explain Hume's fork later). It stands to reason that there have been Chinese people equally dissatisfied with that sort of question. One of the lessons of history is that most of them probably turned to violence. After centuries of listening to one hand clap somebody decided to formalize a system of using that one hand to crack skulls. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Hiya!

The second part of the effects of Koans on a society can be seen in the interaction of the British and the Chinese. The Chinese invented gun powder and then contemplated impossible questions. The British got gun powder, stopped and advanced logic, developed a lot of weapons, and then conquered China. The British then encouraged the Chinese to use opium and really master those Koans. It's only the violent martial artist Chinese that eventually helped to throw off those yokes.

Nevertheless in the interest of punning, just understand that a Koan is an unanswerable Buddhist questions and you'll know that the two Buddhists that lead off the nightly news are the koan-chers.

Posted by DjDuk at February 19, 2007 10:11 PM | TrackBack