Famous Quotations

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is a traditional zen koan -- a question posed by a Zen master to a student.

It is meant to be pondered from within the routine of daily life until the answer opens the true heart of the question. All koans must be answered from within the realm of one's own personal experience, and thus be encountered in the journey of living rather than in the rationalizations of logical thought.

Accordingly, each koan has many answers, answers that will vary both in words and in the stirring of one's mind and emotions.

Even the wisest Zen teacher cannot tell you your own answer. You must find it for yourself, and not in your mind, and not in the comfort of a rational response. Once experienced, the answer is often a life changing experience, and needs no confirmation from anyone else.

Here are responses to the question from a variety of WikiAnswer users:

• What is the sound of one hand clapping? To know, you must experience those aspects of your own life that create this very soundless sound (emotion) within your own being. People who have truly lived with a koan for an extended period of time come to experience the answer. In my own travels down this path with this particular question, there eventually came to be a certain opening of awareness, and a manifestation of the heart of compassion became tangible within. In my experience, the sound of one hand clapping is the emotion of loneliness deeply felt in an increasingly self centered pursuit of enlightenment Experiencing this "answer" turned me away from relative isolation and the self-centered desire to "know," and towards the world and the practice of metta.
• The simpler answer- It depends on what the hand is clapping against! The yin and yang of it. The Gestalt. The figure and the ground. The container and the contents.

• What is the sound of one hand clapping in your own life?

• The sound of one hand clapping is silence. The silence refers to the essence of being which is nothingness.

• What is the sound of one hand clapping? Who are you when your thinking is silenced? .

• Our true nature is stillness. That stillness is the same everywhere in everything. But like he up there... concepts won't teach you anything.

• The sound of one hand clapping is a tiny sound that can be barley heard by humans.
• the hand is the human heart and the clapping is emotions the other hand represents the one that makes us whole thus the clapping of both hands is the power of two people's emotions and the hands touching each other is the connection between the two people
• The sound of one hand clapping is a conversation with someone that never connects with them so you try again and again before realizing you are only talking to yourself - they don't get it. If you never realize that, you are just insane by definition and you will continue to be the one hand that connects with nothingness.
• Using a sound recording device, clap with one hand. Play back the result

I got this from the web and is as good an answer as any [owing to the variety of translation and implication possible]:

sic vos non vobis: Thus do ye, but not for yourselves.

(The commencement of each of four verses which Virgil wrote but left incomplete, on the occasion when Bathyllus claimed some lines really written by the poet, who alone was able to complete the verses, and thus prove their authorship.) [Sometimes used of persons by whose labors others have unduly profited.]

Sent in by

Dr David R Rosseinsky MSc (Rhodes) PhD DSc (Manc) FRSC Email: d.r.rosseinsky@ex.ac.uk _______________________________

A further web page is by Arnold Joseph Toynbee, David Churchill Somervell - 1957 - History - 432 pages

SIC VOS NON VOBIS Cue vos non vobis ...NON VOBIS ... from which I quote in fuller amplification, Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes [Virgil] "Thus you bees make honey, but not only for yourselves" The cited authors note that " The 'only' is not in the Latin, but it might well be, for the poet must have known that if the bees do not get any honey for themselves they go on strike."

DRR _________________________________________ Finally, the full story: From Brewer's Readers' Guides Vos non Vobis. The tale is that Virgil wrote an epigram on Augustus Cæsar, which so much pleased the emperor that he desired to know who was the author. As Virgil did not claim the lines, one Bathyllus declared they were his. This displeased Virgil, and he wrote these four words, Sic vos non vobis… four times as the commencement of four lines, and Bathyllus was requested to finish them. This he could not do, but Virgil completed the lines thus- Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves;

Sic vos non vobis villera fertis oves;

Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes;

Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves.

Not for yourselves warm nests ye song-birds build;

Not for yourselves ye sheep your fleeces bear;

Not for yourselves store hives ye bees have filled;

Not for yourselves ye oxen draw the share.

-E. C. B DRR

It comes from the movie "Stepbrothers" featuring Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, when the two make their beds into a really bad bunk bed.

It is actually featuring Will Ferrell as Brandon Huff and his stepbrother, John C. Riley as Dale Dobek - Adam McKay directed the film.

This is a classic Sufic metaphor/admonition addressing the mechanical aspects of human nature that are reflected everywhere in the rest of the natural world. It has both intrapersonal and interpersonal meanings. The most important element here is to understand that a bee's intrinsic, mechanicalnature is to sting whoever tries to pick it up, even if the help is done as an act of kindness or even to "save" the creature. The bee is flustered, confused, truly unhandleable, knows no better...and will strike out at whoever or whatever tries to interfere with it...because this is its hard-wired, lower nature from which it cannot escape. And so it is with undeveloped human beings, most all of whom remain asleep and thus are acting mechanically towards one another and life. So, in terms of intrapersonal interactions, one must be ruthless in looking honestly at these aspects of the self. And interpersonally, this is the reason that Sufis classically have kept to themselves, understanding what will happen if they actively try to "help" others too much. They get stung! In truth, conditioned humanity LOVES it's sleep state, its wars, the chemical rush it gets from judging and hating others. To try to too actively "disrupt" another person's mechanical sleep state -- even with an intent of kindness, to save that person from violence to others and self -- is likened to picking up the bee. With this understood, only deeply honest, INNER self-work can bring any truly transformative results...while to intervene from without will only bring about more pain and violence directed toward the intervener. This, in a nutshell is the meaning of this Sufi proverb - D.H.

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What a careful, informative and complete answer! Thanks, DH. I have pressed 'Improve Answer', but I am aware that it can't be improved. I just wanted to point to another dilemma question [Chinese, I believe], which asks, Íf a beautiful butterfly should land on your open palm, do you close your hand to keep it, and thus crush it and destroy its beauty, or do you leave your hand open, accepting the inevitable consequence that it will fly away but preserve its beauty?

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