In "Quantum Psychology", Robert Anton Wilson tells a short story which I shall post and discuss in this blog. You are more than welcome to comment and write your own interpretation. So please do not hesitate to respond, I'm grateful for every reply.
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"A young American named Simon Moon, studying Zen in the Zendo (Zen school), at the New Old Lompoc House in Lompoc, California, made the mistake of reading Franz Kafka's "The Trial". This sinister novel, combined with Zen training, proved too much for poor Simon. He became obsessed, intellectually and emotionally, with the strange parable about the door of the Law which Kafka inserts near the end of his story. Simon found Kafka's fable so disturbing, indeed, that I ruined his meditations, scattered his wits, and distracted him from his study of the Sutras.
Somewhat condensed, Kafka's parable goes as follows:
A man comes to the door of the Law, seeking admittance, The guard refuses to allow him to pass the door, but says that if he waits long enough, maybe, someday in the uncertain future, he might gain admittance. The man waits and waits and grows older; he tries to bribe the guard, who takes his money but still refuses to let him through the door; the man sells all his possessions to get money to offer more bribes, which the guard accepts—but still does not allow him to enter. The guard always explains, on taking each new bribe, "I only do this so that you will not abandon hope entirely."
Eventually, the man becomes old and ill, and knows that he will soon die, In his last few moments he summons the energy to ask a question, that has puzzled him over the years. "I have been told," he says to the guard, "that the Law exists for all. Why then does it happen that, in all the years I have sat here waiting, nobody else has ever come to the door of the Law?"
"This door," the guard says, "has been made only for you. And now I am going to close it forever." And he slams the door as the man dies.
The more Simon brooded on this allegory, or joke, or puzzle, the more he felt that he could never understand Zen until he first understood this strange tale. If the door existed only for that man, why could he not enter? If the builders posted a guard to keep the man out, why did they also leave the door temptingly open? Why did the guard close the previously open door, when the man had become too old to attempt to rush past him and enter? Did the Buddhist doctrine of Dharma (law) have anything in common with this parable?
Did the door of the Law represent the Byzantine bureaucracy that exists in virtually every modern government, making the whole story a political satire, such as a minor bureaucrat like Kafka might have devised in his subversive off-duty hours? Or did the Law represent God, as some commentators claim, and, in that case, did Kafka intend to parody religion or to defend its divine Mystery obliquely? Did the guard who took bribes but gave nothing but empty hope in return represent the clergy, or the human intellect in general, always feasting on shadows in the absence of real Final Answers?
Eventually, near breakdown from sheer mental fatigue, Simon went to his roshi (Zen teacher) and told Kafka's story of the man who waited at the door of the Law—the door that existed only for him but would not admit him, and was closed when death would no longer allow him to enter. "Please," Simon begged, "explain this Dark Parable to me."
"I will explain it," the roshi said, "if you will follow me into the meditation hall."
Simon followed the teacher to the door of the meditation hall. When they got there, the teacher stepped inside quickly, turned and slammed the door in Simon's face.
At that moment, Simon experienced Awakening."
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The man in the story gave away his power, gave away his authority.
Not only that, he lived his life in hopes for an "award" which might arrive one day-he will be able to go through the door.
He only managed to find courage to ask the final question, at his last moments. perhaps, if he would have decided to seek and question earlier...
Perhaps if he would have stopped relying, blindly, on some unknown providence- he would have learned, much earlier, that this door was- in fact- his own.
Then he would have been able to find the courage it takes to pass through, in spite of the guard.
He lived his life in the realm of hope, and not that of the present moment.
He clung to the door, stubbornly. The unwillingness to let go, perhaps, was the very thing preventing him from going through. Clinging to the door, from this side- it was impossible to pass on to the other.
Clinging to ideas of "Enlightenment" or "Freedom", or any other concept, can be viewed as an act of violence towards the self.
I recall the poisoned arrow story, the Buddha had told. The man rejected medicine and any cure, before he would be told who shot the arrow, why, what the poison consisted of, and so on. All this time, the man's body suffered greatly from the poison, which could have been easily removed, if he had not been so stubborn.
Perhaps the intellectual process and the attempts to understand the ineffable in a logical manner, were indeed the obstacles of the monk.
He clung to his wish to understand the tale, in the same way the man in the story, clung to his wish to pass through the door.
Clinging to the door might be similar to a man on a boat, wishing to cross the land, yet unwilling to get out of his boat. I think the Zen master's reaction showed just that.
He shut the door in front of the student, and in one instant, made him let go of all conceptualization. One speechless instant, had been able to transmit that which words could not.
It would not have helped, if the master told the student there was no door to begin with. And that there was absolutely no need to pass through it.
The conceptualized perception of the man in the story, created this door, and its guard. His unwillingness to let the door go, had made him spend his entire life with it, unaware all this time- that the door was HIS.
HE created this door. He and no one else.
HE created his own suffering, and HE was the one he has been waiting for, all these years.
He never received permission to pass, because he was the only one who could grant this permit.
Absurd? Insane? Indeed !
In Rumi's words:
I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door.
It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!
