Digression: A Christian Koan

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The warrior was used to solving problems quickly, with finality, and was not a one to doubt.

His adversary, before he died, taunted him with a question:

What is the one word, the enlightened single word, that the Buddhist monks will not say and cannot say it and yet they say it and say it and continually say?

Speak to me that word.

The warrior guffawed through the blood but was later taken aback. Could there really be such a word? Years later, when his physical and spiritual wounds had incapacitated him for living -- nor had in any way prepared him for dying -- he wandered his native land as best he could. He flipped though it hobbling. The teacher's monastery was nothing but a smelly cave and the teacher smelled too. The warrior sat in front of him and waited in silence, nursing his wounds in an elastic sensibility that would then turn on him, that would pierce his core and would not relent. Howling would not have made the wounds feel better. Nor was silence any salve. He just had to move through it.

The so-called Void has a name and is not void. But those who know it will only say it not saying it. All the same, in their silence, the name is said and can no longer be unsaid. Once said, the saying is final, irreversible, the name has been named.

What is this one word? the warrior asked.

Why do you say one? the teacher asked. Why not two? Why not no word at all? the teacher asked.

Are you so dependent on words? Can't anything be said without a word?

Yes but the warrior needed a word.

I could so easily kill you and who knows? I might feel no remorse for it.

But instead I am sitting here talking softly, even reasoning with you, the warrior said.

The teacher hit him savagely with his curved stick. Was that because of his presumption? His arrogance? Or was it only for the remorse?

You already know the word, the teacher said. Its name is Jesus. But I will never say it to you again.

You already knew it anyway.

Now the warrior -- long ago born a Quaker into a different world -- felt the old delicious sting of unasked-for transcendence, a knowledge unasked-for and perhaps not even wished. It was not that this one word salved his pain exactly, more that the pain was now reaching (through even more pain) as if to move into the salve. It was on the move finally.

In mere speech, there could be enough pain to render a person unconscious, speechless. Unable to walk away.

There is a word that the sages will not say and cannot say, and yet they say it and say it and continually say. Those who know it say it even not saying it. You know the word.

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