Just say, “No”

Matthew was working on the rhinoceros fan, had been struggling with it for weeks. I wasn’t much help. It’s one of those koans in the I-don’t-have-any-idea-how-I-passed category. I’d given Matt the option several times to go on to another koan, but he was determined to persevere. That’s when he came up with his backstory.

I love the backstory approach to koans. Ellen Burstyn pointed me in this direction, drawing on her Method Training at the Actors Studio. Koans are often little dramas. You enter by taking one of the roles. You become that character, and you experience the backstory.

Here’s the tiny, little Rhinoceros Fan play:

One day Enkan summoned his attendant and told him, “Go out and fetch the rhinoceros-horn fan.” The attendant replied, “The fan is broken.” Enkan said, “If the fan is broken, bring me back the rhinoceros.” The attendant made no reply.

Matthew had a story. The fan was broken the day before when the teacher whacked the student. Those old Chinese teachers did a lot of whacking. That was all the pointer I needed. I am the student. He wants the fan again. I’ll be damned if I’m going to remind him that he smacked me yesterday. (Zen teachers often don’t remember previous interviews – it’s all always fresh – unlike shrinks who take notes and remember everything). “The rhinoceros fan is broken.” “Bring me the rhinoceros.” No way. It’s one thing to be whacked with a fan. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be whacked with a rhinoceros.

You want me to show you?

“NO!”

Just say, “No.” That’s not the teaching you expected me to find. There is another way to work with koans. It’s the way of working with a poem which I was introduced to as an undergraduate English major. You take a poem or a story, and you translate it into “English,” into a series of declarative sentences. You say what the poem means. You start by talking about what a rhinoceros fan symbolized in ancient China, sort of like saying what the white whale stands for in Moby Dick. You then unpack the koan as a discussion of Zen philosophy.

No. I have no idea what this fan symbolized in ancient China. Maybe knowing can help you create your backstory. What's important to me is what this koan means to me today. What is it showing that has relevance for today?

I feel bombarded by Zen horror stories, tales of teachers taking sexual advantage of students. I wish those students had just said, “no,” when the teacher asked for the Rhinoceros. “Enough is enough.”

Life should be so simple. When do you say “No” to your teacher? Zen practice, like all spiritual paths, asks us let go of our egos, to allow ourselves to be guided. How at the same time can any spiritual seeker retain that capacity for “no” which is so critical to our psychological development? How do you know when to say, “No”? It isn’t easy. I had to learn to say “no” to Bernie, but that’s a story for another day. I’m saving it for Morri’s birthday, July 7.