Bob Schwartz

I began today listening to birds:

If birds sing in the morning
Why not me
Why not we

I quickly turned to a rhinoceros.* There is a famous Zen koan that has nothing to do with birds. Also everything to do with birds, even if they are not mentioned.

I thought of writing about the koan here. Funny that I haven’t before. I thought of sending friends the koan, found at Blue Cliff Record 92, without explanation or commentary. What would they think? What do you think?

Yanguan (750-843) called to his attendant, saying, “Bring me the rhinoceros fan**.”
The attendant said, “It’s broken.”
Yanguan said, “If the fan is broken, then bring me the rhinoceros.”
The attendant didn’t answer.

*I didn’t intend for that sentence to be multi-layered, but it could be. I wrote “turned to” to mean changing the subject. One of the great absurdist plays by Eugene Ionesco is Rhinoceros, in which the people of a town one-by-one turn into a rhinoceros. It is sometimes interpreted as a parable about people turning into Nazis during World War II.

**Likely an expensive item, made of rhinoceros horn or picturing a rhinoceros. Not someone who is fanatical about rhinoceros.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz