ONE HAND CLAPPING
For Forty years, which is half of my present life, I have been Clapping with One Hand and with Equanimity, knowing that few will hear, and have been Writing with the other.
Slowly, perhaps I am a little slow, I have come to realize that Writing with One Hand is equally effective.
That is to say that hardly anyone pays attention.
Half of those who have entered this web page in the multiple years of its existence slip in for less than five seconds and then slip out. I have no idea why they came or what they expected to find.
The problem is that I find voices floating in from time to time asking, "why am I writing at all?" It is because I have been writing for more than seventy years, starting with great excitement in an exercise book, writing "Cowboy" stories.
I wrote then without a single idea in my head that anyone would read them and wrote with the joy of creative imagination let loose. There was no expectation of anything at all.
There was a point some five years later when I began writing for others, but still the same joy, and perhaps innocence, continued.
About the same time that I started Clapping with One Hand expectation entered my Writing with One Hand. That was an error, for expectations bore fruit and the "Savage Beast" arose with aversion to this world.
So the Clapping with one Hand without Expectation bore Patience, Calm, Determination, Perseverance and an introspection that led to the listening of the turning of the Buddhist Dharma wheel.
But as you will have clearly realized the sound of One Hand Clapping does not carry very far.
Unfortunately as the years have passed I have discovered that my Dharma Writings have somehow transformed themselves into another One Hand Clapping.
So now there are two hands out there independently clapping with hardly anyone listening.
My Dharma Writing One Hand Clapping is making that Writing Hand and the mind that moves it very tired. Were it not for the sound of my other One Hand Clapping that only this illusory I and a few standing close can hear, the Writing Hand would probably retire and start planting Apple Seeds.
But here I am flooding the silence with another very small and insignificant "virtual" silence since hardly anyone is listening.
Is that a problem?
I remember in this moment the moments following Buddha's Awakening, when he asked himself if there was any sense at all teaching what he had discovered, since he felt sure that perhaps no one would understand.
He introspected and spoke with the Brahma within and the reply was that if one single person really listened then all his effort in teaching the True Dharma would be worthwhile.
The question here is whether Brahma was correct or not.
In this world the Survival of the fittest is the rule, although Nature's basic operations with respect to this have been repressed by the Human Virus that has generated the new rule, which is the Survival of the Most Unfit.
In the early days of modern history perhaps the most fitting ideals and concepts survived, but today in this modern world of globalized minds the least fitting ideas and concepts survive.
My left hand continues clapping and the silence of Dharma is there somewhere for those with sufficient guts to listen, avoiding the less fitting ideas of the Dharma hand which has been slipped into velvet gloves of folly.
My right hand continues writing, for the moment.
The world's population at the moment is greater than seven billion people. Of these, about 350 million have my Dharma Writings available.
How many of these read my Dharma writings per day?
Certainly not a million or even a thousand. Infrequently a hundred. Usually twenty, of which a half put one toe in and then quickly pull it out.
How many really reach in deeply hearing what Buddha generated and Chan developed?
How many really reach in for a fuller understanding?
Are you one of them? Are you One of 350 million?
If you are, then perhaps my One hand Clapping is not in vain and my One Hand Writing might in your Awakened mind be continued so that the Dharma Light will survive.
When you die, what epitaph would be most fitting for you as a human creature?
I would like to believe that perhaps it might be:
"He carried the Dharma Light, learning how to Clap with One Hand, writing with the Other."
If that can be said, then you will have become a Human Being,
a Man of Dao in Harmony and Peace with the Dusty World.
Shanjian