I got it! The little boy is a monkey and he's aiming at his mother who's about to go kill her cheating husband.

Alright, so I don't got it. That's as far out of the box I can go.

Damn, I gotta leggo my eggo.

Any more hints?

After thinking about it some more, I realized that there is no answer. The monkey offers a lose-lose situation, no matter what you do you're gonna be fucked. The only and last option the boy now has is to think and meditate. In order to focus purely on the question, you have to free up your mind of your ego and any preconceptions of any kind.

Why do you have to let go of your ego and preconceptions? Because they hinder your actions, your motives and most importantly, the way you think. The story doesn't require an answer, the little boy's situation relates to all of us. Thinking about things that do not have answers or having preconceptions about things before experiencing them will put us in a loss-loss situation similar to the boy. Leave your preconceptions in the back of your head but do not let it take over your thoughts.

I think the answer is quite simple.... he's over-thinking thus fucking himself.

_________________
An approach a day keeps the guru away.

The koan has ALREADY been solved. The answer is IN THIS THREAD. Yet, your egos are so strong that you kids choose to repeat the redundant egotistical drama over, over, and over again. This is the EXACT reason why this forum is subjected to repetitive self proclamations by 16 year old virgins. This is the reason why the virgin gives up and cries about the "hard to game girl". This is the reason why. This is the reason. This is this. What is this?

Let "this" go. You don't know "this". In fact, you know nothing. Once you can admit "this", you will learn "this". If you cannot accept "this", you'll always be an ass scratching monkey.

How is that any different from my answer? You just worded it differently.

you wrote:
You say that there is no answer. I say that there is an answer and it has already been written on this thread.

You say that this is a lose-lose. I say that your statement is an egotistical assumption.

You say 'let go of ego', yet your ego has accepted the death of a mother and/or father. Letting go is not the same as giving up. Refusing to think about it is not the same as being open minded.

You say the boy must meditate. Why not you?

Since I don't know anything more about the Monkey Mind situation than anyone else my knowledge is limited as is everyones else.

But damn a talking monkey, call the god damn America Got Talent, I'm gonn' make me some money.

I keep re-reading this thread and I think about this question more then I want to
But it wrecks my mind, I just look right past the obvious answer, it won't hit me.

The only thing I can come up with is to be humble. There is no need to be aggressive or submissive. The boy should lower his bow and ask the monkey for advice.

The thing that bothers me is that the boy takes aim at the monkey as soon as he sees him, the story does not tell of hunting activities or anything, so why is the boy setting out with a weapon and gets ready to fire upon the first living thing he stumbles upon?

The BEAUTY of this koan, as already mentioned, is that this is one of those riddles that CANNOT be explained by somebody else.

Proof of this very statement is RIGHT here in this FUCKING thread. The answer has been explained in this thread MULTIPLE FUCKING times. In plain black and white.

Someone has said. This IS the answer. Yet despite this, many reading will still scratch their heads and ask, 'Wait... is this the answer?'

When you drop your ego, that is when you'll hit upon a transcendental truth. THE ANSWER... and you won't need to ask the question because you already knew you were right.

Bit of a mind fuck eh?

I'm gonna repeat my clue:

Either possibility given to the boy results in a disaster. Therefore, why does the boy even care which option he takes...

Look if you rocked up to a doctor's ward complaining about a lump on your head AND the doctor turns around and says it's cancerous AND you will die in a month. AND no SPAM exists to cure it.

What do you do?

Do you drop your ego and fully accept your fate or do you work yourself up over trying to find a cure that DOES NOT exist because you want to live longer?

Carry on meditating...

_________________
*Justice renders the WEAK his due*
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Haha...I haven't checked this thread in ages. However to quote the last person, yes you are correct & no your 360 degrees off it. Yes the answer has been repeated several times & no it hasn't been said at all.

Koans are fun because once you have it, you have it. There's no reason to ask others. If you don't have it, you'll still question yourself as you're telling others.

By the way, I thought that if you go 360 degrees, you end up exactly where you were.

Exactly. Having done the circular motion though, there are changes.

Not sure if this is been posted but this is what I think the answer is

The Monkey represents the goal
The Boy represents you
The father and mother represent what you sacrifice by pursuing or not pursuing the goal ie killing the monkey

opportunity cost and equivalent exchange. In order to gain something you have to be willing to lose somethin or put in an equal value of work. A decision has to made and whatever happens happens. You cannot regret making the decision as that is pointless. Meeting the monkey was an unfortunate event and nothing can change that however the boy is now forced with a choice and regretting the decision will only hinder him and since it had to be made theres no choice in it.

edit: The other dilema of this that I can think of is should the boy be listening at all. Had he not heeded the monkey's words and just killed it. He would not be faced and paralyzed with indecision and if what the monkey was saying is true than what would happen still would happen.

I think this is a more appropriate fit for here cause it is similar to the feeling and indecision we get when AA occurs. We see a hot girl and we are ready to walk over and pick her up and then suddenly a voice in our heads goes "Are you crazy, wtf are you doing. If you go over there you'll get your heart broken and painfully rejected." However by not going over there you are rejected automatically. If you had just gone over and not heard that voice than you may still get rejected but you did what you could with the info you had and have nothing to regret as you didn't know you would get rejected as opposed to the other scenario where you know rejection is a choice.

One final thing I will note about this is that the monkey makes no mention of when the parent would die. I am assuming that it is immediately after the monkey but even if thats not the case the boy shouldn't be contemplating the consequences of his actions cause he cannot afford to.

Well, my view is this is simply a shit test. The important question to me personally is whether the situation is real or metaphorical. If it's metaphorical, your answer or action doesn't matter. Everyone will have their own interpretation of the situation and what it signifies. It will depend on your cultural layering and the assumptions you make.

If it's real, then the remaining question is how far the reality extends. Maybe in this mythological world of the monkey, you can ask questions and talk your way out of it. Maybe you can shoot the monkey and discover afterwards that he was lying to you. Maybe you can say, "Wow, this is really cool, I've never met a talking monkey before! Be my friend and we will have many adventures together." But we haven't been provided an environment, we've been thrown into this mythological world "cold." So our actions are meaningless in this world, as we will only learn by taking action or inaction and observing the results. It is a mythological world, not our own world, so our previous bases of life learning here are not necessarily relevant. This is the problem of Cthulu, of beings who think in terms of Blue and Orange Morality. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... geMorality For all we know, having only 1 parent might be an arch-advantage in this world. Maybe the monkey is trying to save you from the curse of a nuclear family, who knows.

"What Zen students did" is irrelevant. They lived in a specific place with a specific historical context. We do not have that context. We are random dudes and the occasional gal on the internet. We don't / shouldn't have any guilt that we didn't "play this game" according to the environment and culture of a Zen student who spends a great deal of his life meditating. A great many people provided material resources to those monasteries, like vegetables and livestock, so that such monks could eschew material conditions and concentrate on other matters. This is not a puzzle, this is a mirror, and "My mirror is better than your mirror" is a worthless analysis. Except to understand the ego of people who ascribe great significance to closed-system puzzles.

Life is open! Be glad you can actually think about monkeys any way you want.