Three More Clues, Turned in Another Direction

My earlier sets of clues had to do, you might say, with the nature of reality, of being. This set has a different emphasis, though the same ground. This one looks toward decisions and actions.
The first clue is a Zen story that I told in an earlier post:

A Zen teacher, Nan-ch’uan, stands before a room of students, holding up a kitten in one hand, a knife in the other. He tells his students that he will chop the kitten in half if none of them can say immediately whether reality is (a) objective or (b)subjective.

The second clue is this very short story and parable by Kafka, “Before the Law”:

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.” Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper’s mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir) (you can find this and many other of Kafka’s writings on Vanderbilt University’s web site).

For the third clue, in trying to prevent an overly-willful reading of the first two from leading you astray, please take this excerpt from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu as an essential element of the set:

People who cut the great carpenter’s wood
Seldom escape without injuring their hands.

It is certainly reasonable, as many commentators have said, to interpret this in its context as referring to people taking it upon themselves to punish or to kill other people. But for my purpose here, I want you to take this far more broadly, not necessarily referring to hurting or killing other people, not even referring necessarily to what most people would consider bad rather than good action.  Think of it as applying to all decision, all action, and what and who lies behind it, and what and who should drive it (or not drive it), and how, and why.  Who makes the photograph?  I mean, the photograph with the focus and effectiveness of the heron’s strike, piercing the water to hit a target obscured by reflections and shadows.