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

This is a philological study of the Zen koan 隻手の音声 (sekishu no onjō), the sound of one hand, from Hakuin Ekaku's own 1753 account of devising it through his song, sermon and last New Year verse to J. D. Salinger's epigraph, which fixed the English title on 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 (sekishu no onjō)

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (sekishu no onjō) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master 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 sang it to millworkers, preached it in the street, and put it in the New Year verse he wrote at eighty-four, the year he died. J. D. Salinger's 1953 epigraph to Nine Stories fixed the English title on the word clapping, which is Salinger's, not Hakuin's.

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 between 1872 and 1946 carries the koan; the forty-nine bilingual dictionaries of the era were checked and none files it. It entered English by another door.

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 song written for people who could not read the sutras, and a warning that the koan is not a place to stop.

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 [9].

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 [10]. 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 [11]. 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 [12].

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. 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 [13].

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][14]. 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 [9]. 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 [15]; 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 [16]. 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

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? This is the form everyone knows, named as the lineage's step and not read here beyond the epigraph itself [17]. It is Salinger's clapping, applied to both hands, that fixed the English title, and it is the word Hakuin does not use for the one hand.

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 [18].

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?" [19]

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 [20].

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") [21]. Clapping is Salinger's and Kapleau's, not the koan's. The two American proverb collections, Buchanan 1965 and Galef 2012, do not carry it [22].

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 [23]. The house title is the English form and the page's explanation, the sound of one hand, is Hakuin's; both are defensible and they are not the same phrase. 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

The title, romaji and explanation are sound; this is the best-grounded text in the family, and it attributes the line to the right man. 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 — a better sentence than the Zen koan of Master Hakuin, and a true one. And the word clapping is Salinger's, not Hakuin's: the one hand is raised, not clapped [17]. 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 for people who could not read the sutras, sang it to mill-workers, 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, outside this house's collection; it is the first English book titled with the koan.

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; 道元『正法眼蔵』, 身心学道, 1231–53.
  2. 『空谷集』, thirteenth century, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X1303.
  3. 『無門關』, at CBETA. Taishō T2005.
  4. 「隻手の声」「隻手の音声」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank; 白隠慧鶴『さし藻草』, 1760. National Diet Library pid 823257, scan 480 (1896 typeset).
  5. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753. National Diet Library pid 1148985, scan 6.
  6. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753. National Diet Library pid 1148985, scan 6; the editor's note, scan 3.
  7. 白隠慧鶴『藪柑子』, 1753. National Diet Library pid 1148985, scan 6.
  8. 白隠慧鶴『粉引歌』, 1760. National Diet Library pid 823165, scan 69 (1911 typeset).
  9. 白隠慧鶴『辻談議』. National Diet Library pid 823165, scans 63–64.
  10. 白隠慧鶴『假名法語』, a letter. National Diet Library pid 823165, scan 50.
  11. 白隠慧鶴, New Year verse, 1768, in a 1910 言行録. National Diet Library pid 823439, scan 99.
  12. 与謝蕪村, preface to 『春泥句集』, 1777, in an 1897 edition. National Diet Library pid 875713, scan 63.
  13. National Diet Library, the public-domain archive: pids 818471, 823240, 818595, 759636, 823171, 899779, 875706 (Torio Koyata's記, the 1887 hymn commentary, the 1905 hypnotism textbook, Shaku Sōen's 1909 lectures, the mill-woman anecdote in four printings, and the 1911 annotation of Buson's preface).
  14. 『北磵語錄』, thirteenth century, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X1365.
  15. 『韓非子』, 功名篇, at zh.wikisource.
  16. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910. National Diet Library pid 862766, scans 56, 219, 325 and 448; 松本's proverb collection, 1901. National Diet Library pid 767884, scan 13.
  17. J. D. Salinger, epigraph to Nine Stories, 1953.
  18. Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Tuttle, 1957, stories 21, 27 and 42.
  19. Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen, Beacon Press, 1965, p. 138.
  20. 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).
  21. 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).
  22. Buchanan, 1965; Galef, 2012 (American proverb collections).
  23. JMdict (EDRDG), 「隻手の声」, at gokanji.

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