The Bactra Review Labyrinths of Reason
The parallel may even be closer. One of the debated issues in the history of
Zen is whether or not koans were originally meant to have solutions.
Several historians of philosophy, starting with the eminent Hu Shih, have
argued that they did, that Zen was originally in fact a highly intellectualist
form of Buddhism, and that koans were supposed to force monks to
think, not suddenly shock them into some odd mental state. (Dr. Hu even had a
reasonable answer to ``What is the sound of one hand clapping?'' which
unfortunately I cannot recall.) If this is right, one is tempted to say that
analytical philosophy is Zen for logicians, as opposed to Zen by a
logician, like Raymond Smullyan's delightful The Tao Is Silent.