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This paper will attempt to reply to some of the questions raised by John King-Farlow in his recent evaluation of Professor Chung-ying Cheng's earlier paper, "On Zen Language and Zen Paradoxes.'' King-Farlow, in his paper, "Anglo-Saxon Questions for Chung-ying Cheng," (See Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 3, 285-298, September 1983) addresses Professor Cheng's cross-cultural essay as one who is uninitiated in the Chinese language, but is interested in the light that cross-cultural research might shed on traditionally intra-cultural disciplines. The first question that King-Farlow introduces, and one that he chorally repeats throughout his paper, is "How useful for understanding Zen discourse is the following body of comment?" In response to this question, I would reply that King-Farlow's questions are very valuable, especially from a pedagogical perspective, for they represent the type of profound misunderstandings which are generated once a Western mind attempts to inquisitively approach certain Eastern topics. In particular, his paper reveals the type of befuddlement that inevitably bubble up when a strictly logical mind attempts to penetrate the maze of Zen discourse which is sometimes logical, but often not.
One of King-Farlow's most astute observations is his questioning of the appropriateness of the list of possible values for 'q' given in Cheng's "schemata of paradoxes" which describes the logical structure of paradoxes as (H) P is q if and only if P is not q, where P is a possible paradox, and 'q' is some suitable sentential predicate of either logical or semantical or pragmatical significance. King-Farlow notes that rather than explicate the relevance of the possible values for 'q' to the actual examples of Zen paradoxes presented by Cheng, that Cheng only assures the reader that one must understand the
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questions as occurring in the context of conversations between people with great learning in the fields of Taoist and Buddhist thought. While Cheng does not explicate in what respects his Type I paradoxes are paradoxes, as King-Farlow notes, given Cheng's cluster conception of paradoxical value, it would not be hard to explain how each example qualifies as a paradox, even though Cheng did not himself do this in his article.
In contrast to Cheng's schemata of Zen paradoxes, King-Farlow offers what he calls four "crude, overlapping diagnostic responses" by which he chooses to analyze the Type I paradoxes outlined by Cheng. These "diagnostic responses" are (I) that the statements are apparent contradictions, but are in fact, pseudo-contradictions, (II) that they are instances of false inference or misleading implication, (III) that they are plays on different sense of a word, and (IV) that they are confusions of contraries and contradictions. While these diagnostic evaluations of Zen koans are wholly applicable to the paradoxicality of the koans, King-Farlow goes astray in applying them to an understanding of the koans themselves.
For example, the first koan states. "Show me your original face before you were horn." King-Farlow suggests that this is either (I) a pseudo contradiction, or (IV) a play on different senses of the word "original." It must be admitted that Cheng's logical analysis of the structure of a koan is not obviously applicable to the surface structure of this sentence for it does not state or resemble the structure P is q if and only if P is not q. At the same time. the paradox thesis set forward by Cheng is salvageable if we recognize that the paradox resides in the fact that the koan asks us to show something that cannot be shown in the usual sense. Is it not paradoxical for one person to ask another to perform a task that cannot possibly be performed, since when one asks something of another, the request is for the possible, not the impossible. But, paradoxically, the first koan asks us to show what is physically non-existent, i.e., the original face prior to birth. Though this koan borders on contradiction, it evades it, or disguises the contradiction by asking to be shown a particular thing which one might naively think is showable. Had the statement read, "Show me what is unshowable," then it would be a blatant contradiction, but by asking to "show the original face prior to birth," the contradiction is disguised in the apparent concreteness of the unshowable thing which is requested to be shown.
While King-Farlow's analysis precedes through a detailed examination
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of the first eleven of the eighteen koans categorized by Cheng as Type I Zen paradoxes, he concludes that while one need not find them strongly paradoxical, they still may be paradoxical in some respects that Cheng has not yet made clear. I believe that Cheng does make it clear in what respect the Type I paradoxes are paradoxical, though paradoxically he only gives the key to this explication after he has presented the paradoxes. On page ninety of his article, Cheng states that koans of Type I category are "Qp" paradoxes, i.e., they are paradoxical questions which ask the impossible, or ask what is the opposite of what one might expect to be asked. These koans can be loosely fitted into the traditional analytic representation of a paradox as P is q if and only if P is not q, where q is a sensible question. The questions are questions because the surface structure of the koans demands that they be ranked as questions. But, the ontic commitment that the questions entail is so utterly null that the apparent question is not a true question. Thus the koan questions are paradoxical in that while they appear to be questions, in regard to ontological commitment, they are not questions.
King-Farlow's main confusion appears to be his inability to see in what sense certain koans offered by Cheng are paradoxical. Apparently he believes that a koan by koan paradox explication is in order. Such a minute analysis is unnecessary and perhaps would rob the reader of the chance to discover in what sense the koans are paradoxical. At the same time, the reader might not see the paradoxicality in its most proper context, so, perhaps a compromise can be reached by giving a Type by Type explication of the paradoxicality of the koans.
As was just pointed out, Type I paradoxes are questions which ask the impossible, or ask something that one would never expect to be asked due to the impossibility of the demand. Type II paradoxes are either paradoxical questions replied to paradoxically by straight answers, or straight, logical questions, such as "What is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" replied to by a paradoxical reply which is apparently completely irrelevant to the question asked; in this case, the reply to the question is paradoxically another question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Type II paradoxes, then, are paradoxical dialogues which link either a rational question to an irrational, paradoxical reply, or, an irrational question to a rational reply. The paradoxicality of Type II paradoxes resides in the juxtaposition of the rational and the irrational in a dialogue which is usually noted for its
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pursuit of knowledge and reason, i.e., the dialogue of question and answer.
Type III paradoxes are composed of straight-forward questions and straight-forward answers which are juxtaposed in a paradoxical dialogue which is paradoxical because the questions have absolutely nothing to do with the answers and vice versa. This explication, found on page ninety of Cheng's paper, is not explained in detail, nor is it explicitly related to the individual koans as it should be. But it is there. Cheng, true to the esoteric Zen tradition, has hidden the Key to the paradoxicality of the paradoxes behind the lock so that one must be adept at crawling in windows to walk through the door. Furthermore, he has unnecessarily confused the reader by listing a fourth Type of paradoxes which he then quickly dissolves into instances of Type I and Type III occurrences. Cheng, it must be admitted, is often contusing, but his baffability is usually appropriate, and always humorous.
King-Farlow makes some very relevant suggestions concerning Phenomenal Truth-Checking Conditions and Transcendental Truth-Conditions which are quite in order for I feel that one of the reasons King-Farlow is so disturbed by Cheng's characterization of koans as paradoxes is that he seems to think that the characterization is made absolutely, and without paradox itself, but this is not the case. As Cheng points out, and as King-Farlow appears to understand, the paradoxical koans are both paradoxical and non-paradoxical. depending on the level of comprehension of the initiate. They are. and naturally so. paradoxical to the uninitiated Zen student; but, they are not paradoxical to the one who can see beyond their surface silliness, and into their ontic emptiness.
In this regard. King-Farlow's objections to Cheng's classification of the koans as paradoxes merit him a satori award. That is to say, in claiming that koans can be looked at as non-paradoxical expressions, King-Farlow has delivered Cheng, a true Type IV koan where the assertion and the question are paradoxically related: the assertion coming, paradoxically, first, and the questions coming, paradoxically, last.
Thus, King-Farlow's questions concerning the paradoxicality of the various Types of koans presented by Professor Cheng serve as evidence that he has surpassed the lesson of ontic non-commitment where one understands that "ontologically speaking all terms in language are ultimately referential in pointing to this ultimate reality (of nothingness), but conventionally
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speaking, they are ultimately non-designating,"[1] and has advanced to the stage of "contextual demonstration and the preservation of Zen paradoxes" where one sees that the koans demonstrate the "ultimate reality and reconstitute the ultimate truth in a context which is freely determined and presented by the speaker."[2] In essence, King-Farlow's questions are both valuable and illuminating for the student of Zen philosophy and Zen language!
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1. Chung-ying Cheng, "On Zen Language and Zen Paradoxes," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 1, 1973, p. 94.
2. Ibid., p. 96.