Impasse and Kong-an or The state of not-knowing

Kong-an: The effect of the kong-an is to bring one to a stuck point, where one's usual way of relating to oneself or the world proves to be unsatisfactory and yet how to proceed is unclear. In Zen terminology, the words of the kong-an are called the question's tail while this stuck state is referred to as the question's head. The Zen Master instructs the student to grasp the question head, and not let go. In Zen literature, this state of not-knowing is referred to as great doubt and is likened to the experience of a child who has lost its mother. In practicing, one must nurture this doubt by maintaining a basic faith or confidence in one's intrinsic potential and by having a determined courage to stick with it. In brief, these are the essentials and intent of kong-an practice. Impasse: "When you get close to the impasse, to the point where you just cannot believe that you might be able to survive, then the whirl starts. You get desperate and confused. Suddenly, you don't understand anything anymore, and here the symptom of the neurotic becomes very clear. The neurotic is a person who does not see the obvious." Perls states that when one understands the impasse correctly, he/she wakes up and experiences a satori, a Zen word meaning "enlightenment." He further says: "It's the awareness, the full experience of how you are stuck, that makes you recover, and realize the whole thing is not reality." Perls therefore sees the process of transformation as one of becoming aware of and working through the roles that one plays and then experiencing the impasse.

Definition of work: Work is the exercise of discretion within limits to produce a result. Arthur Koestler wrote a well known book called The Act of Creation, which was all based upon the realization that creativity arises when a single situation or idea is perceived in two self consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference. One of the things I saw was that these two incompatible frames of reference were what Jaques was referring to as limits. In industry the two basic limits in which one works are time and quality. Furthermore, as time is money, one could make this into a more economic statement and say work is carried on within cost/quality limits. The basic aim could be said to be to increase quality and reduce costs. However after a given point these two aims become incompatible, to achieve the one, one must forego the other. It is thereafter necessary to be creative in order to be able to pursue both aims simultaneously. A systemis a set of independent but mutually related elements. This, I also realized at the time, is true of Koestlers definition of creativity, as well as Jaques definition of work, but in a new guise. The elements of the system must be mutually incompatible otherwise they would merge, and a whole to be a whole must be perceived to be a whole. This means that intelligence is an essential element in the whole. This is in accord with Jaques contention that human work, as opposed to work done by machines, is a whole, not a collection of activities or motions, (physical or mental) of which discretion, another name for intelligence, is a necessary ingredient. Creativity and work both produce new wholes. Zen Meditation realizes wholeness itself. However this wholeness is not something new, nor is it a new synthesis. This whole is the very mind itself that is seeking the whole. The last line of a Zen poem says, The True-self which is seeing has been seen into. In many Japanese monasteries the injunction, Look under your feet! meets a newcomer at the entrance of the temple, and the Japanese Zen master, Hakuin, says we are like one in water crying I thirst! But the need to struggle with the incompatibles is the same whether it is creativity, work or meditation. - From: Albert Low, Creativity and Conflict at work