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隻手の音声 sekishu no onjō The Sound of One Hand Clapping

隻手の音声 (sekishu no onjō), the sound of one hand, is Hakuin Ekaku's own koan. A tract of 1753 says he devised it five or six years earlier, to replace the older 無字 koan. This study follows it through his song and sermon to English, where clapping is in print by 1935, a word Hakuin never used.

Japanese Scroll of The Sound of One Hand Clapping (sekishu no onjō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
The Sound of One Hand Clapping隻手の音声sekishu no onjō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

隻手の音声, sekishu no onjō, the sound of one hand, is Hakuin Ekaku's own koan, and the rare case in this family of texts where the maker names the date and the reason himself: a tract of 1753 says he devised it five or six years earlier to replace the older 無字 koan, which had brought only some dozens of students through in forty-five years. Hakuin set it in a mill-song, preached it in a street sermon, and put it in the New Year verse he wrote at eighty-four, the year he died. In English the koan is in print by 1905 and the sound of one hand clapping by 1935, eighteen years before Salinger's epigraph to Nine Stories; the word clapping belongs to the English tradition, not to Hakuin.

Overview

The sense. One sense, because one author. Every gloss from 1753 to today paraphrases Hakuin's definition, and the readings differ only in what they do with it. Hakuin himself presents it as a better tool, not a deeper mystery: the 無字 had taken forty-five years to bring some dozens through, and the one hand raised the doubt in anyone. His mill-song warns against resting in it. Buson makes it the law of an art, the way to use common words and not be common. The Meiji teachers make it the first question and the mill-woman's answer makes it a joke that everyone understood. The modern dictionaries flatten it to what sound has one hand, which is Hakuin's question without his answer, that the one hand is raised and has no sound, and that the not-hearing is the hearing.

The words. 隻手, sekishu, is one hand: 隻 counts one of a pair, as in 隻眼, one eye, and the oldest Japanese use the dictionaries find is Dōgen's, 共出一隻手, both put out one hand, in the 正法眼蔵 (1231–53, 身心学道) [1]. In Chan writing before Hakuin the one hand is the teacher's, reached down to a student: 垂一隻手, lower a single hand, in the 空谷集 [2]; 各出一隻手、扶竪宗乘, each puts out one hand to hold up the teaching, in the 無門關 [3]. None of these is about sound. 音声, onjō, is the Buddhist reading of the word that is onsei, voice, in ordinary speech; the go-on reading marks it as a term of the sutras, and Hakuin himself pairs it with the plain word for sound: 隻手の聲を聞き得、音聲を止め得, to hear the sound of the one hand, to still all sound [4]. Onjō is the reading the go-on tradition requires here, and onsei would be wrong. The whole phrase is Hakuin's own definition turned into a name. In 藪柑子 he writes: 卽今兩手打合せて打つ時は丁々として聲あり。唯隻手を擧る時は音もなく香もなし, now, when the two hands are struck together there is a sharp sound; only when the one hand is raised there is neither sound nor scent [5]. The verb for the one hand is 擧る, raise, and for the two hands 打つ, strike. The one hand does not clap and fail to sound. It is held up. The word clapping in the English title belongs to the English tradition, not to Hakuin. Three forms of the phrase live side by side in Hakuin's texts: 隻手の聲, the sound of the one hand, in his prose; 隻手音聲, the four-character name, in his song and his last verse; and the question form a 1911 editor gives as the gloss, 隻手に音聲ありや, has the one hand a sound? 隻手の音声 is the headword of the デジタル大辞泉 and joins the first two. The reading is sekishu no onjō.

The text in English. No Japanese-English dictionary of 1872 to 1946 on the house's shelf files the koan; their text layers were searched and none carries it. It entered English by another door, through writers on Zen.

The historical record

1753. Hakuin Ekaku, 藪柑子, a tract for a retainer of the lord of Okayama, written for his mother's fiftieth memorial in his sixty-ninth year. This is the koan's own text, and the only witness in this whole family of texts whose author says in writing when he made the line and why. Hakuin recalls his awakening on hearing a distant bell at Eigan-ji in Echigo, forty-five years before, and the forty-five years since of setting students the 無字 and other devices, with some dozens coming through. Then [6]: 此五六ヶ年以來は、思ひ付きたる事侍りて、隻手の聲を聞屆け玉ひてよと人每に指南し侍るに、從前の指南と拔群の相違ありて、誰にも疑團起り易く、工夫進み易き事、雲泥の隔有之樣に覺へ侍り。是に依りて唯今專一に隻手の工夫を勸め侍り, these five or six years I have had a thought, and have told everyone: hear the sound of the one hand. It differs from the old instruction beyond measure; the great doubt rises easily in anyone, the work moves easily, as far apart as cloud and mud. So now I urge the one hand alone. He defines it in the two sentences quoted above, ties it to Confucius' Heaven that says nothing and to the mountain crone of the Noh who hears the unborn sound in an empty valley's echo, and promises that when the one hand just enters the ear, 佛聲、神聲、菩薩聲 … 世間所有の一切の音聲毫釐も聞殘す事なし, the voices of the Buddhas, the gods, the bodhisattvas … not a hair of any sound in the world is left unheard; this is called the pure divine ear [7]. Forty-five years from the bell of 1708 gives 1753, and five or six years back gives about 1747 or 1748: the koan is datable to Hakuin's early sixties, from the one witness who could know.

1760. Hakuin, さし藻草, the first citation the dictionaries give. 隻手の聲を聞き得、音聲を止め得、見性の眼を開き得玉はざらん限りは、成佛は存じも寄らず、淨土の片端も亦見付け玉ふ事能はじ, unless you hear the sound of the one hand, still all sound, and open the eye that sees your nature, Buddhahood is out of the question and you will not glimpse the edge of the Pure Land [4]. The 精選版日本国語大辞典 files 隻手の声 with this line as its first attestation.

1760. Hakuin, 粉引歌, the mill-song. 隻手音聲求め得て置て、此で休すりや斷見外道, having attained the sound of the one hand, if you rest there, that is the nihilist's heresy [8]. The four-character name, in a sermon set as a mill-song, and a warning that the koan is not a place to stop. The date is the one the 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives the song [9].

Undated. Hakuin, 辻談議, a street sermon. 我れ常に人に勸めて隻手無聲の微妙音を聞かしむ、是れ彼の山姥が謂はゆる一洞空しき谷の響は無聲音を聞くたよりとなるとは、是れ此の隻手の聲を云へり。今日は是これまで、明日また來りたまへ。あめおこしあめおこし, I always urge people to hear the subtle sound of the one hand that has no sound; when the mountain crone says that the echo of an empty valley is the means of hearing the soundless sound, this is what she means, the sound of the one hand. That is all for today; come again tomorrow. Sweets, sweets! An editor's headnote traces the line to the Noh play 山姥, 謠曲山姥に「一洞空しき谷の聲、梢に響く山彦の、無聲音を聞くたよりとなり」とあるを引けり, and the soundless sound behind it to Zhuangzi: 莊子に「冥々に視、無聲に聞く……無聲の中獨聞く聲和す」とあり [10].

Undated. Hakuin, a letter in his 假名法語. He does the thing itself. 予直に手を拍して曰く、兩掌相觸れて聲あり、却つて隻手の聲を聞くや。と云ひて、一掌を立つ, I clapped my hands at once and said: two palms touch and there is a sound; now, do you hear the sound of the one hand? and raised one palm [11]. The student answers that he hears it clearly, and is asked for proof.

1768. Hakuin's New Year verse, in his eighty-fourth year, the year he died. 逍遙龍澤最峯頂、今曉特張舊厚顏、八十老僧逢歲正、生憎隻手音聲關, wandering the peak of Ryūtaku, this dawn I put on my old thick face; an old monk of eighty meets the new year, and still, alas, the barrier of the one hand's sound [12]. He called out that he had never met such a New Year, and thanked his disciple Tōrei. He died that December.

1777. Yosa Buson, preface to 春泥句集. The earliest use outside Zen, and a poet's. 俳諧は俗語を用ひて俗を離るゝを尚ぶ。俗を離れて俗を用ゆ。離俗の法最もかたし。かの何がしの禪師が隻手の聲を聞けといふもの、則ち俳諧禪にして離俗の則なり, haikai prizes leaving the vulgar by using vulgar words; to leave the vulgar and use the vulgar, the law of leaving the vulgar is the hardest of all. That certain Zen master's "hear the sound of the one hand" is haikai-Zen, and the rule of leaving the vulgar. An 1897 editor's note names the master: 白隱也 [13].

1884 to 1916, the Meiji archive. By the 1880s the phrase is everywhere. The statesman Torio Koyata records that the master Imakita Kōsen's first words to him were 隻手の音聲如何, what is the sound of the one hand? (1884). A pilgrims' hymn commentary of 1887 writes 先ツ須聞隻手ノ聲、隻手音聲了々ナレバ何ゾ詠歌ヲ用ン, first you must hear the one hand's sound; once it is clear, what need of hymns? A hypnotism textbook explains the koan in 1905. Shaku Sōen opens his lectures on the 無門關 with it in 1909: 白隱の隻手音聲を聞かぬうちは、何を云ふた所が、皆妄想のかたまり, until you have heard Hakuin's one hand, whatever you say is a lump of delusion. And every preacher told the story of the mill-woman who answered the koan with 白隠の隻手の聲を聞くよりも、兩手をうちて商賣をせよ, rather than hear Hakuin's one hand, clap both and do business, printed in 1894, 1907, 1910 and 1916 [14]. When the poets Hekigotō and Meisetsu annotated Buson's preface in 1911, they could not quite remember where the phrase came from: 禪話にでもありさうに思はれますが、今は一寸思ひ出しません [15].

What is not a source. Three older lines stand behind the koan, and none is its source. The Chan one hand, 隻手, is the teacher's hand reached down, in the 無門關, the 空谷集 and the 北磵語錄 of the thirteenth century; Hakuin took the image and gave it a sound [3][2][16]. The soundless sound, 無聲音, is the Noh play 山姥's echo of an empty valley and, behind the play, Zhuangzi's seeing in the dark, hearing in silence; Hakuin names the play himself and an 1911 editor supplies Zhuangzi [10]. And the Chinese commonplace that one hand makes no sound is older than all of them and says the opposite of what Hakuin wants: 韓非子 has 一手獨拍、雖疾無聲, one hand clapping alone, however hard, makes no sound, an argument that a ruler needs ministers [17]; the 水滸傳 has 單絲不成線、孤掌豈能鳴, a single thread makes no cord, can a lone palm sound?; and the proverb 孤掌難鳴, a lone palm hardly sounds, is what the Japanese proverb dictionaries of 1901 and 1910 cite under one coin does not ring and one man cannot quarrel [18]. The Chinese line is about helplessness. Hakuin turned the same hand into the whole point. The Analects line he alludes to, Heaven that says nothing, is recalled from 陽貨.

The phrase in English

1904–05. Arthur Lloyd, A Buddhist Preacher's Manual, in The Expository Times. Lloyd, writing from the University of Tokyo during the war with Russia, describes the Zen retreat, where a director sets each sitter a riddle: To us, some of the problems seem childishly ridiculous. 'What is the sound of one hand?' asks the priest. And the candidate, after due deliberation, goes to him and whispers 'Mu.' And he draws his own moral: until the Nature of Buddha is known as well as the Nothingness of the Phenomenal World, man's best efforts are but the 'sound of one hand.' This is the oldest English for the koan that the Internet Archive's full-text search reaches [19].

1917. As a problem set in the meditation hall. K. Asakawa of Yale, on Zen training: These problems, as, for example, "the sound of one hand," "I prior to the birth of my parents," "A puppy possesses no Buddha-nature," and the like, may be characterized as epitomizing in various degrees of depth the illusory contradictions of the world [20]. The same year The Japan Magazine, describing a Zen monastery: As an example of a theme sometimes given for meditation there is the following: "When you clap your hands, where does the sound come from?" "Do you hear the sound of one hand or of both?" [21] The one hand has no verb yet.

1922 and 1924. Kenneth Saunders. In Epochs in Buddhist History, his Haskell Lectures of 1921, printed in 1924, a Zen abbot, asked how one might begin: the abbot went on to give me one of the first of the Ko-ans: "Listen," he said, "for the sound of a single hand"; and when I smiled, "You had better go," he said, "to one of the simpler and more popular sects." A footnote gives the koan to Hakuin and names the two that follow it: "Hark to the sound of a single hand on Mount Fujiyama"; and a third: "If you are dead and without form, produce the sound of a single hand." Saunders had given the koan in the same words in Buddhism in the Modern World (1922): "Listen," he will say, "to the sound of a single hand." [22]

1933 and 1934. D. T. Suzuki. He reports what Hakuin wrote, that he had lately come to give the One Hand instead of the 無字 because it awakens a spirit of inquiry more readily, and then: The koan is, "Hear the sound of one hand." A sound issues when two hands are clapped, and there is no way of its issuing from one single hand [23]. And the next year, among questions Zen asks: "When both hands are clapped a sound is produced: listen to the sound of one hand" [24]. Suzuki keeps Hakuin's shape: the clapping belongs to the two hands.

1935. Buddhism in England, volume 9, number 6. Two hands when clapped make a certain sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping? What was your original face before your parents were born? This is the oldest printing of one hand clapping for the koan that the Internet Archive's full-text search reaches, read in its search text only, the copy being a lending copy; Henry James Forman quotes the same two sentences in Have You a Religion? (1941) [25]. Here the verb has moved from the two hands to the one.

1949. Christmas Humphreys, Zen Buddhism. A third famous koan is "the sound of one hand clapping". Two hands clapped make a well-known sound. What is the sound of one? The book's ninth plate is a woodcut by his wife, Hasuko, titled The Famous Koan, "The sound of one hand clapping". His Pelican Buddhism of 1951 has Two hands clapped make a sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping? [26]

1953. J. D. Salinger, epigraph to Nine Stories. We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?, signed only A Zen Koan [27]. The wording was in print by 1935 and in Humphreys' book of 1949; Salinger's book is the best-known printing of it, not its source. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (2014) gives the koan as What is the sound of one hand clapping? with clapping set in square brackets [28].

1957. Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, story 21, The Sound of One Hand. The koan as a story for readers of English. Mokurai of Kennin-ji sets it to the twelve-year-old Toyo: "You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together," said Mokurai. "Now show me the sound of one hand." After a year of geisha music, dripping water, wind, an owl and locusts, each refused: At last little Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. "I could collect no more," he explained later, "so I reached the soundless sound." The koan returns in stories 27, a pupil of Hakuin's disciple Suiwo, and 42 [29].

1965. Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen, page 138. Yasutani Hakuun 安谷白雲 to a Western student in dokusan: I might assign you Sekishu, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" or Honrai no Memmoku, "What was my Face before my parents' birth?" or just "What am I?" or "Who am I?" [30]

2012. Norman Waddell, Beating the Cloth Drum: Letters of Zen Master Hakuin. Hakuin in his own letters: "When two hands meet, a sound is produced," I said. "Can you hear the sound of one hand?" I held up one hand before him. "I hear it loud and clear," he replied. The certificates his students received named the two-stage koan Hakuin gave beginning students: "Hear the sound of one hand," followed by "Put a stop to all sounds." Waddell's glossary: One Hand, the Sound of (sekishu no onjō) "Hear the sound of One Hand!" Famous koan for beginning students Hakuin devised in his sixties [31].

2012. Stephen Addiss, The Art of Haiku. In passing, on Hakuin's haiga: It was Hakuin who invented the koan "What is the sound of one hand?" (the Japanese does not include a word for "clapping") [32]. Clapping is the English tradition's, not the koan's. Two English collections of Japanese proverbs, Buchanan 1965 and Galef 2012, do not carry it [33].

Today. 精選版日本国語大辞典, under 隻手の声: 禅宗での公案の一つ。両手を打って鳴る音を聞くのがふつうであるが、片手で鳴らす音を心耳をもって聞かなければならないとした。絶対の境地を推量させたもの. デジタル大辞泉, under the catalogue's exact wording 隻手の音声: 禅宗の公案の一。両手を打つと音が出るが、片手にはどんな音があるかということを問うもの。思慮分別を越えた絶対の境地に導くものとして、白隠が初学者のために用いた, one of the Zen koans: two hands clapped make a sound, but what sound has one hand? Hakuin used it for beginners, to lead them to the absolute beyond thought [4]. Both glosses paraphrase Hakuin's two sentences of 1753. JMdict, under 隻手の声: the sound of one hand clapping (a classic Zen koan), marked Buddhist [34]. What a rendering must keep: one hand raised, not clapped; sound for 音声, which is a sutra word and not voice here; and the fact that the line is a question put to a student, not a saying about the world.

A reading

This is the best-grounded text in the family. The koan's own text is 藪柑子, 1753, and Hakuin's two sentences are worth having whole: 両手打合せて打つ時は丁々として声あり、ただ隻手を挙る時は音もなく香もなし [5]. Hakuin says he began setting it these five or six years before 1753, after forty-five years of the 無字. And the word clapping is the English tradition's, not Hakuin's: the one hand is raised, not clapped. On the dates, 1686–1769 are the Gregorian conversions of his birth on the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month of 貞享 2 and his death on the eleventh of the twelfth month of 明和 5; the Japanese references print 1685–1768 by era year, and either is defensible.

My own reading is Buson's. The koan this line lives inside is not the monastery's but the poet's: use the common word and leave the common behind. Hakuin made the one hand because the doubt rose with it in anyone, 誰にも疑團起り易く, set it in a mill-song, and put it in a New Year verse at eighty-four with a sigh that he was still at the barrier. That is a history entirely in his own hand.

Sources not seen

Yoel Hoffmann, The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers, Basic Books, 1975, a translation of the 1916 exposé of koan answers, not in this house's collection.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「隻手」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank, with its first citation, 道元『正法眼蔵』, 身心学道, 1231–53. https://kotobank.jp/word/隻手-547144
  2. 『空谷集』, thirteenth century, 卍新纂續藏經 X1303, juan 5, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=X1303&juan=5
  3. 『無門關』, Taishō T2005, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2005&juan=1
  4. 「隻手の声」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, and 「隻手の音声」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank; the first citation, 白隠慧鶴『さし藻草』, 1760, in 森大狂 編『禅門法語集 続』, 1896. National Diet Library pid 823257, scan 480. https://kotobank.jp/word/隻手の声-307256 · https://kotobank.jp/word/隻手の音声-547145 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823257/1/480
  5. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753, in the 1935 edition. National Diet Library pid 1148985, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1148985/1/6
  6. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753, in the 1935 edition, scan 6; the editor's note on its date and occasion, scan 3. National Diet Library pid 1148985. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1148985/1/6 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1148985/1/3
  7. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753, in the 1935 edition. National Diet Library pid 1148985, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1148985/1/6
  8. 白隠慧鶴『粉引歌』, in 石上学人 編『新註白隠法語集』, 1911. National Diet Library pid 823165, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823165/1/69
  9. 「自業自得」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank, which dates おたふく女郎粉引歌 1760. https://kotobank.jp/word/自業自得-73015
  10. 白隠慧鶴『辻談議』, with the editor's headnote, in 石上学人 編『新註白隠法語集』, 1911. National Diet Library pid 823165, scans 63–64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823165/1/63
  11. 白隠慧鶴『假名法語』, a letter, in 石上学人 編『新註白隠法語集』, 1911. National Diet Library pid 823165, scan 50. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823165/1/50
  12. 白隠慧鶴, New Year verse, 1768, in 服部俊崖『白隠和尚言行録』, 1910. National Diet Library pid 823439, scan 99. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823439/1/99
  13. 与謝蕪村, preface to 『春泥句集』, 1777, in 阿心庵雪人 編『蕪村全集 校註』, 1897, with the editor's note. National Diet Library pid 875713, scan 63. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875713/1/63
  14. The mill-woman: 伊東洋二郎『説教心の種』, 1894, National Diet Library pid 818471 · 破魔禅『禅と活動』, 1907, pid 823240 · 加藤咄堂 等『布教新辞典』, 1910, pid 818595 · 高橋竹迷『金剛力』, 1916, pid 944147. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/818471 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823240 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/818595 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/944147
  15. 鳥尾小弥太『明道協会要領解説』, 1884, National Diet Library pid 758391 · 小関泰法『西国三十三所御詠歌仮名鈔』, 1887, pid 818837, scan 8 · 福来友吉『催眠心理学概論』, 1905, pid 759636 · 釈宗演『無門関講義』, 1909, pid 899779 · 内藤鳴雪 等『蕪村句集講義』, 1911, pid 875706. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758391 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/818837/1/8 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/759636 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/899779 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875706
  16. 『北磵語錄』, thirteenth century, 卍新纂續藏經 X1365, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=X1365&juan=1
  17. 『韓非子』, 功名篇, at Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/韓非子/功名
  18. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910. National Diet Library pid 862766, scans 56, 219, 325 and 448 · 松本真弦 編『皇国俚諺叢』, 1901. National Diet Library pid 767884, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/56 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/767884/1/13
  19. Arthur Lloyd, A Buddhist Preacher's Manual, The Expository Times, volume 16, 1904–1905, p. 446, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/expositorytimes0016jame
  20. K. Asakawa, Social Reactions of Buddhism in Medieval Japan, reprinted from H. Morse Stephens and Herbert E. Bolton, eds., The Pacific Ocean in History, Macmillan, 1917, at the Internet Archive, leaf 16. https://archive.org/details/socialreactions00asak
  21. The Japan Magazine, volume 7, 1916–1917, the article Zen Discipline, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/jm-1916-1917-v7-U-of-California
  22. Kenneth J. Saunders, Epochs in Buddhist History: The Haskell Lectures, 1921, University of Chicago Press, 1924, p. 144 and note · Buddhism in the Modern World, SPCK, 1922, by the Internet Archive's full-text search. https://archive.org/details/epochsinbudhisth035244mbp · https://archive.org/details/buddhisminmodern00saun
  23. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series, 1933 (preface dated Kyoto, February 1933), the essay on the koan exercise, in the Rider edition of 1950, p. 186.
  24. D. T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, 1934 (preface dated Kamakura, August 1934), the chapter Illogical Zen, in the Grove Press printing of 1964.
  25. Buddhism in England, volume 9, number 6, 1935, and Henry James Forman, Have You a Religion?, 1941, both by the Internet Archive's full-text search (lending copies). https://archive.org/details/buddhisminenglan0009unse · https://archive.org/details/haveyoureligions0000henr_b3y6
  26. Christmas Humphreys, Zen Buddhism, Heinemann, 1949, p. 125 and plate 9, at the Internet Archive · Buddhism, Penguin, 1951, by the Internet Archive's full-text search. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.223270 · https://archive.org/details/buddhism00hump
  27. J. D. Salinger, Nine Stories, Little, Brown, 1953, epigraph, in the Internet Archive's full text. https://archive.org/details/ninestories0000jdsa
  28. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 792, s.v. sekishu kōan.
  29. Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Tuttle, 1957, stories 21, 27 and 42.
  30. Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen, Beacon Press, 1965, p. 138.
  31. Norman Waddell, translator, Beating the Cloth Drum: Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, Shambhala, 2012 (an e-book text without page numbers; the record gives the positions).
  32. Stephen Addiss, The Art of Haiku: Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters, Shambhala, 2012, the chapter on haiga by Hakuin and other Zen masters (e-book text; the record gives the position).
  33. Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965 · Galef, Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom, Tuttle, 2012.
  34. JMdict, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, 「隻手の声」. https://www.edrdg.org/jmdict/j_jmdict.html

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 隻手の音声 (sekishu no onjō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/sekishu-no-onjo.