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The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

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Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies, No.2
July 2000 , pp.103－124
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Nation Dong Hwa University

The Representation of Silence in Text:

Examples from Two Selected Koans
Ming-yu Tseng∗

Abstract

This paper explores how silence is represented in text, particularly in religious

text. To illustrate the relation of silence to verbal expression, a rhetoric of silence is
proposed. It consists of four points: (1) silence is a textual element and strategy; (2)
silence is a communicative act; (3) silence is as powerful as language; (4) ways of
representing silence are ways of signifying silence. Then, by analyzing two koan texts
from Ch’an/Zen writing, this paper investigates how silence is narrated and
represented in the texts and what silence might signify. Such investigation also shows
how silence, words, and narrative are interwoven in the shaping of textuality.

Keywords： koan, nar rative strateg y, silence, religious discourse, textuality,

treatment of silence in text, pragmatic-philosophical approach

∗
Assistant Professor, Department of English ,National Dong Hwa U niversity

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Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies, No.2

The Representation of Silence in Text:

Examples from Two Selected Koans

1. Introduction

In their introduction to Silence, the Word and the Sacred, Blodgett & Coward
write:
Whether…silence becomes sacred as it enters language depends
precisely upon the way silence is known, and how we choose to voice it.
Once voiced, it becomes that place -- indeed, a certain kind of weather --
where it is possible for the word to return, to hide itself in the
immanent/transcendent zone from which significance is at once drawn and
disseminated. It is as if… silence were there all the time waiting for the
word for its discovery, and without which the word has no way to acquire
relief, and nowhere to return when at rest. It is a necessary chiasmus: no
word, no silence; no silence, no word. But if word evokes silence, so silence
evokes the word, summoning forth itself and taking it back in the end. (8)
This passage suggests complex, dialectical relationships between silence and
word in sacred discourse; silence and word presuppose and shape each other in the
utterance of the sacred. Besides, how silence is understood and how it is presented
are important in such articulation.
In a now classic article on silence in Western Apache culture, Basso concludes
by suggestiing that studies on silence may shed light on language.
… the situational determinants of silence seem eminently deserving of
future study. For as we become better informed about the types of
contextual variables that mitigate against the use of verbal codes, we should

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 The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

also learn more about those variables that encourage and promote them.
(84)
Basso’s concern is to generalize various contexts in which silence replaces
speech, in the hope that the complicated correlations between language and social
context can be better understood.
Despite the different orientations of the two passages quoted above – the
former literary-philosophical and the latter sociolinguistic – they both imply the
complementarity of silence and the verbal. This also bears relevance to koans. For
instance, in investigating the rhetorical practice in the discourse of awakening,
Wright proposes “four dimensions of Ch’an rhetoric”: “(1) the rhetoric of
strangeness, (2) the rhetoric of ‘direct pointing,’ (3) the rhetoric of silence, and (4)
the rhetoric of disruption” (24). He thus characterizes the role of silence: “as the
complementary ‘other’ to speech, its message is taken to complete the direction and
intent of other rhetorical practices in Ch’an” (30). The premise is that silence or, at
least, some types of silence are “conjoined with speech as parallel forms of
signification” (30). This highlights the significance of silence to verbalization.
However, I would suggest that silence per se as a rhetorical strategy merits further
investigation. What follows will first propose a rhetoric of silence, paying particular
attention to the interrelationships between silence, speech, and textuality. Then, I
shall analyze the meaning and function of silence in two koan texts. It will be
demonstrated that silence is significant not only as a response or strategy in
conversations, but also as a narrative strategy that empowers another level of
dialogue between text and reader.

2. A Rhetoric of Silence

In characterizing silent moments in religious ceremonies, Thomas R. Kelly

remarks that “silence and words have been of one texture, one piece” (art. 245;
quoted from Blodgett 212). Similarly, Picard writes that “silence and speech belong
together” (36). These serve as a starting point for the purpose of the following

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argument, for they accord with the concern set out above. This section uses four
points to formulate a rhetoric of silence.

A. Silence is a textual element and/or a textual strategy.

The textual element of silence can come to the fore when a dialogue is
recorded and transcribed, as has been conducted in ethnomethodology, for instance,
the works of Sacks, Schegloff and Atkinson & Drew. Levinson draws on their data
extensively to demonstrate and argue for the importance of conversational analysis
in pragmatics (294-332). The role of silence receives some attention in his
discussion. Here is an example:
A: Is there something bothering you or not?
(1.0 [second])
A: Yes or no
(1.5)
A: Eh?
B: No.
(Atkinson & Drew, 52; quoted from Levinson, 300)
After analysing several examples, Levinson comments on silence as recorded in
the data:
all the different significances attributed to it must have sources in the
structural expectations engendered by the surrounding talk. So sequential
expectations are not only capable of making something out of nothing, but
also of constructing many different kinds of significance out of the sheer
absence of talk. If conversational organization can “map” meaning onto
silence, it can also map situated significance onto utterances …. (329)
His major concern is not silence but an enquiry into the patterning of
conversational organizations with a view to unfolding the relationships between such
patterning and sequential expectations. Nevertheless, inherent in his argument is the
premise that silence is part of the texture of a conversation and that it can carry
significant, meaningful relations with the surrounding talk. In other words, if we
define a text as a record of a sequence of utterances, silence is arguably part of the

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 The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

text.
Silence as a textual element is also assumed in Davies’ account of discourse
style in Quaker Meetings. “Silence and speaking for Quakerism are in tension” (118).
Those participants in a Quaker Meeting, like family members, “have been socialized
into appropriate linguistic behavior” (133), namely, when to speak and when to
remain silent. After analyzing one particular Meeting for Worship from his audio
recorded data, he characterizes the Meeting as follows:
I want to suggest that the Meeting for Worship is both a social occasionand
a speech event. Certainly that is how members see it. As in other speech
events such as single conversation, there are forward and back references
(e.g. “last week in Meeting”); but to members a Meeting for Worship is also
a social occasion in which ministry is normal and in which items of ministry
interrelate. Perhaps a better analogy than a family meal is a performance
(music, singing, stories) and there is therefore a strong link with oral
narrative. (133; my emphasis)
The significant implication of mentioning the link with narrative is the
necessity of adopting a device or strategy associated with narratives. In other words, if
silence is part of the narrative, silence can serve as a rhetorical strategy.
The argument here can be further supported by the position adopted by the
ethnography of communication. Namely, speech and human non-verbal behavior,
including silence, should be considered to thrash out an integrated theory of
communications (Hymes 1962, 1974; Saville-Troike 1982: 1-11; 1985).
Saville-Troike (1985) suggests that silence can be expounded in such a framework by
describing various components involved in a communicative event, an event in which
communication takes place (13-15). Among them are “genre,” “topic,” “setting,”
“participants,” “message form,” and “act sequence.” As Saville-Troike summarizes
the underlying principles:
Basic to this approach is not merely accounting for what can be said, but
what can be said when, where, by whom, to whom, in what manner, and in what
particular circumstances. It follows naturally that this line of inquiry must

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consider also who may not speak about what and in what situations, as well.
(13)
The point at issue is that silence, treated in this framework, is interwoven with
various linguistic and extra-linguistic aspects of communication. Such components
as “what can be said” and “in what manner” the message is expressed entail a certain
communicative strategy. This would accord with my argument of treating silence as a
rhetorical strategy in that the strategy aims at achieving a purpose (cf. Anderson
1984, 1985).

B. Silence is a communicative act.

Elucidating the interrelations between speech and silence in modern Western
theatre, Kane comments: “Nonparticipation in the speech act does not constitute
nonparticipation in the social act” (20, my emphasis). “[O]n the contrary,” she
continues, “one chooses to remain silent and avoid silence, to control and be
controlled” (20). Kane’s observation can be further expanded to shed light on the
dynamism of silence in dialogue.
According to Saville-Trokie (1985), “[a] basic distinction can be made between
silences which carry meaning, but not propositional content, and silent
communicative acts which are entirely dependent on adjacent vocalizations for
interpretation, and which carry their illocutionary force (6).While “[t]he former
include the pauses and hesitations that occur within and between turns of talking,”
the latter ‘may include gestures… [and] silence unaccompanied by any visual clues”
(6). A silence in response to a request in a telephone conversation is an example of
the latter type, which is also the concern of the argument here. Saville-Trokie (1985)
further characterizes this latter type of silence:
Silence as part of communicative interaction can be one of the forms a
“speech” act may take -- filling many of the same functions and discourse
slots -- and should be considered along with the production of sentence
tokens as a basic formational unit of linguistic communication. Silence may
be used to question, promise, deny, warn, threaten, insult, request, or
command, as well as to carry out various kinds of ritual interaction.

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 The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

As with speech, silent communicative acts may be analyzed as having

both illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect (cf. Austin 1962),
although here we clearly cannot use ‘locution’ in its usual sense. The analogy
carries further, since similar inferencing processes are employed to interpret
the meaning of what is not spoken as in interpreting the meaning of what is
said. (6-7)
The message of the final sentence above is supported by Sperber & Wilson’s
suggestion that both verbal and non-verbal stimuli can be treated as
ostensive-inferential communication (50-54).

C. Silence is as powerful as language.

Saunders’s investigation of how silence is employed in an Italian village called
Valbella bears witness to the dynamic function. His analysis demonstrates that noise
and silence are used there as what he calls “emotion management styles.” His
discovery is that “the more serious the potential for conflict, the more likely it is
that people will choose the silent mode” (165). One example he cited shows that
silence is used in avoiding conflict between a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law in
an extended family household (181). He concludes that “[s]ilence, in sum, is a
common strategy for the management of tense situation .… Silence helps the
individual to control the emotions, and may at times also allow the passive
expression of discontentment without dangers of a direct challenge” (183). In other
words, silence may serve as some kind of power, in the sense of control, to mitigate
potential conflict and tension. This is further supported and reinforced by Tannen’s
(1990) analysis of two examples of literary discourse. Her analysis demonstrates that
“silence had been the cap on conflict. When it gave way to verbal expression, the
conflict erupted with everlastingly destructive results” (176).
The discussion so far does not suggest that silence can always be interpreted as
exercising some kind of power to manage conflict. Instead, this “is only one of
many functions of silence” (Tannen 1990: 277; cf. Saville-Trokie 1985: 16-17).
Nevertheless, my argument here is intended to highlight the operative dimension of
silence and suggest that this aspect be considered in unmasking various uses of

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silence in different contexts. As Bindeman illustrates:

Silence has meaning because it affects our lives. … We must learn to look at
what silence does, and try to avoid thinking about what its essence might be.
In this way, the essence of silence will become gradually more and more
clear to us as long as we continues to describe our use of silence from
different perspectives and in great detail. (54)

D. Ways of representing silence are ways of signifying silence.

How silence is exploited in various writings is an important issue in uncovering
the textual nature of silence. Novelist William Faulkner’s view on silence bears on
the point at issue: “I prefer silence to sound, and the image produced by words
occurs in silence. That is, the thunder and the music of prose takes place in silence”
(248). This suggests that silence is interwoven with other textual strategies in
creating his fictional world. Thus how silence might be represented in a text can
engender fruitful discussion of his work (cf. Yoshida).
To place the discussion in the context of religious discourse, I quote a passage
from Mystical Theology, commonly attributed to Pseudo-Dionysius (c. A.D. 500).
… he [Bartholomew] says that the subject matter of the Divine Silence is
vast yet minute, and that the Gospel combines in itself both width and
straitness. I think he has shown by these words how marvelously he has
understood that the good cause of all things is eloquent yet speaks few
words or rather none, possessing neither speech nor understanding because
it exceeds all things in a superessential manner and is revealed in its naked
truth to those alone who pass right through the opposition of fair and foul
and pass beyond the topmost altitudes of the holy ascent and leaves behind
them all divine enlightenment and voices and heavenly utterances and
plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as the Scripture says, that One
Which is beyond all things. (Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names
and The Mystical Theology, translated by C. E. Rolt; quoted from and
revised by Capps & Wright: 37)

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 The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

What is at stake is that how the “Divine Silence” is made manifest in a corpus
of mystical writing is an issue to be further tackled. Eliot writes in Four Quarters:
“Words, after speech, reach/ Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,/ Can
words or music reach/ The stillness…” (“Burnt Norton,” V, 139-142). One way of
understanding these lines is to pose the question of how silence could be
represented by words (see below). The analysis in the next section focuses on how
silence as a response to a question or enquiry is narrated and represented.

3. Silence in the Koan

Two koans will be under scrutiny in this section. The first one is quoted below.
It is a case where the Buddha says nothing.
An outsider asked Buddha, “I do not ask about the spoken and the
unspoken.” [For a good while, the World Honored One….] The outsider
sighed in admiration and said, “The World Honored One’s great kindness
and great compassion have opened up my clouds of illusion and let me gain
entry.”
After the outsider had left, Ananda asked the Buddha, “What did the
outsider realize, that he said he had gained the entry?” The Buddha said,
“Like a good horse, he goes as soon as he sees the shadow of the whip.”
(The Blue Cliff Record, translated by Cleary and Cleary: 365)
外 道 問 佛 ：「 不 問 有 言 、 不 問 無 言 。 」
世尊良久。
外 道 讚 歎 云 ：「 世 尊 大 慈 大 悲 ， 開 我 迷 雲 ， 令 我 得 入 。 」
外 道 去 後 ， 阿 難 問 佛 ：「 外 道 有 何 所 證 ， 而 言 得 入 ﹖ 」
佛 云 ：「 如 世 良 馬 ， 見 鞭 影 而 行 。 」
(碧 巖 錄 第 六 十 五 則 )
In the Chinese text, the narrator uses only four characters to describe how the
Buddha responds to the outsider’s enquiry:
世尊 良久

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World-honor very long time

(For a long while, the World Honored One….)
That is, the Buddha’s remaining silent is not explicitly verbalized, but has to be
inferred from the incompleteness of the narrative or from readers’ knowledge of the
episode concerned. Unlike Cleary & Cleary’s translation (“The World Honored One
remained silent”), I use the punctuation “…” to indicate the incompleteness of the
sentence: something is left unsaid. For this is closer to the original.The same koan
was also collected in Wu-men kuan 無門關 (case 32), with the difference regarding
the description and representation of the Buddha’s silence.
世尊 據坐
World-honor seated
(The World-honored One was seated.)
In other words, the Buddha’s silent response is represented by his still sitting posture,
which is reminiscent of the Buddha image or sculpture found in Buddhist temples.
The following analysis of this koan centers on three aspects of silence,
respectively oriented toward the narrator, the Buddha, and the outsider. Let us first
consider the silence from the narrative perspective. Presumably, the Buddha
remained silent for a long while on his seat when responding. The narrator has a
variety of choices to describe this scene. For instance, the narrator might say either
any one or any combination of the following.
offered no verbal response.
remained silent.
said nothing.
The World Honored One was seated.
sat there (with his eyes open/closed).
sat still/motionless.
…for a long while.
However, the narrator in one koan collection chooses the passing of the time
to verbalize that scene, while the narrator in another collection uses the posture of
the Buddha or/and the place he is situated in. The narrative strategy of the two

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narrators converges in their avoidance of mentioning the Buddha’s silence or of his

saying no words. In other words, silence is locked beneath the temporal and visual
dimensions of the scene governed by silence. The important consequence is that an
empty space is created by the gap between the outsider’s enquiry and the absence of
the Buddha’s verbal response. This empty space reflects and evokes the presencing of
silence, in which textuality and narrative are intertwined. The soundlessness as
enacted by time and posture is not only dramatized by the Buddha’s silence but is
also skillfully narrated by the narrators. In short, the point I would like to make is
that silence is not just the Buddha’s discourse strategy (see below); silence here is
also a narrative strategy in disguise of time and image.
Next, let us consider what Buddha might intend his silence to mean. The
outsider’s enquiry needs to be reasoned first, for the silence is employed to respond
to it: “not asking about the spoken or the unspoken” (不問有言、不問無言). It can
be inferred that the outsider must have known something about Ch’an Buddhism,
for by no means is his enquiry superficial. As Yuan Wu’s 1 accompanying
commentary note puts it: “Although he is not the member of the household, still he
has a bit of fragrant air. Twin swords fly through space. It is lucky [that] he doesn’t
ask” (Cleary and Cleary: 364). The metaphor “Twin swords fly through space” refers
to the juxtaposition of 有 言 (with words; spoken) and 無 言 (without words;
unspoken). The final sentence “It’s lucky that he doesn’t ask” suggests the outsider’s
use of negation 不問 (not ask). Paradoxically, the outsider still poses his question
despite his verbally negating the act of asking.
The Buddha’s silence is both a discourse strategy and a teaching strategy. It
enables the Buddha not to fall victim to the trap of the outsider’s remark. To
provide a verbal response would exemplify the spoken. In contrast, silence manifests
itself as a means which sustains the unspoken and which still conveys something.
To put it in another way, what remains unspoken may be passed on without words.

1
Master Yuan Wu 圜 悟 lectured on a collection of one hundred koans compiled and
furnished with verses by his t eacher Master Hsueh Tou 雪 竇 . The on e hundred koans,
Hsueh Tou’s verses, and Yuan Wu ’s introductions and comments together form The Blue
Cliff Record 碧 巖 錄 .

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Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies, No.2

This can be illustrated by Sperber & Wilson’s distinction between two levels of
intentionality in communication: informative intention and communicative intention. The
former is “to make manifest or more manifest to the audience a set of assumptions”
(58). The latter is “to make it mutually manifest to audience and communicator
that the communicator has this informative intention” (61). The crucial difference is,
in the case of “communicative intention,” the communicator’s commitment to making
mutually manifest. That is, one can have an informative intention without having a
communicative intention. One example Sperber & Wilson give is when a female
called Mary lays pieces of her broken hair-dryer around in front of her partner.
She wants him to mend it but does not want to ask overtly. Her behavior, a kind of
silence, has the informative intention that she needs his help, but not the
communicative intention, for she does not commit herself to making her request
explicit.
I would suggest that the Buddha’s silence in this koan is a strategy of fulfilling
the informative intention without the communicative intention (cf. Jaworski: 84-95).
That is, the Buddha’s silence is intended to make manifest to the outsider a set of
assumptions about Ch’an. As Ts’ai writes, the silence is “Tao te chin shih” 道的啟示
(“the revelation of the Way”) (193). Yuan Wu’s commentary note on Buddha’s
silence supports that the Buddha has his informative intention: “Do not slander the
World Honored One; his voice is like thunder” (Cleary & Cleary: 364). As Faure has
mentioned, the type of silence in Ch’an discourse is characterized as ‘thundering
silence’ (160). This suggests that the silence is not something void or contentless (cf.
Tannen 1985).
There are at least two reasons that help to justify my interpretation of the
Buddha’s not fulfilling the communicative intention. First, this would allow the
Buddha to distance himself from making any propositions regarding the outsider’s
question. The set of assumptions about Ch’an is only weakly communicated in the
Buddha’s silence (cf. Sperber & Wilson: 59). Second, the Buddha’s lack of
commitment to making mutually manifest any assumptions about the Dharma would
highlight all the more the outsider’s insight -- his ability to recognize the Buddha’s

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 The Representation of Silence in Text: Examples from Two Selected Koans

informative intention. This might serve to explain the outsider’s enlightenment.

Sperber & Wilson further explain what difference it makes whether an
informative intention is manifest to the audience or mutually manifest to audience
and communicator. “Mere informing alters the cognitive environment of the
audience. Communication alters the mutual cognitive environment of the audience
and communicator” (61). Considered in this light, the informative intention of the
Buddha’s silence would really relate to the outsider’s awakening. The Buddha’s
silence changes the outsider’s “cognitive environment,” activating the outsider’s
mental processing. It is unknown how exactly the outsider comes to undergo such
a change, but it is certain that the silence has some powerful effect on him. The
Buddha’s final remark in this koan serves as a compliment to the outsider for his
discerning insight into the silence: “Like a good horse, he goes as soon as he sees
the shadow of the whip.” It is from this positive perspective that the role of silence
is conceived here.
The following passage form Yuan Wu’s commentary drops a hint:
…what did the outsider realize? It was like chasing a dog towards a fence:
when he gets as far as is possible, when there is no way to get by, he must
turn around and come back; then he will be leaping lively. If you cast away
judgement and comparison and affirmation and negation all at once, your
emotions ended and your views gone, it will naturally become thoroughly
obvious. (Cleary & Cleary: 366)
If the simile about chasing a dog applies to the outsider’s realization of the
Way, the Buddha’s silent response must have some impetus on the outsider’s quest.
The vagueness of silence must play a role in bringing the realization. Blodgett’s
account of silence in poetic and sacred discourse well articulates this aspect:
… not only do words enter from a shared silence, but also their very
entering occasions the transformation of the speaker, as if the speaker were
being re-created, if only momentarily, within the silence. Such silence must
be considered at once created and creating…. It is at such moments that
words themselves seem to undergo a change corresponding to that of the

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speaker. (212)
The outsider’s breaking the silence -- his words right after the silence -- signals
his undergoing some kind of transformation. McCumsey’s description of
“mystical silence” might summarize the empowerment of the silence: “there is
nothing of deprivation in it, but rather a fullness beyond words” (321).
The silence in the next koan to be analyzed has quite a character of its own,
which I shall call “the silence of silence.”
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri, “what is a bodhisattva’s a entry into the Dharma
gate of nonduality?”
Manjusri said, “According to what I think, in all things, no words, no
speech, no demonstration and no recognition, to leave behind all questions
and answers; this is entering the Dharma gate of nonduality.”
Then Manjusri asked Vimalakirti, “We have each already spoken.Now
you should tell us, good man, what is a bodhisattva’s entry into the Dharma
gate of nonduality?”
Hsueh Tou said, “What did Vimalakirti say?” He also said, “Completely
exposed.”
(The Blue Cliff Record, case 84, p. 459)
維 摩 詰 問 文 殊 師 利 ：「 何 等 是 菩 薩 入 不 二 法 門 ?」
文 殊 師 利 曰 ：「 如 我 意 者 ， 於 一 切 法 ， 無 言 無 說 ， 無 示 無 識 ， 離 諸
問答，是為入不二法門。」
於 是 文 殊 師 利 問 維 摩 詰 ：「 我 等 各 自 說 已 。 仁 者 當 說 ， 何 等 是 菩 薩
入 不 二 法 門 ?」
雪 竇 云 ：「 維 摩 道 什 麼 ?」 復 云 ：「 堪 破 了 也 。 」
(碧 巖 錄 第 八 十 四 則 )
This koan is from an episode recorded in the Vimalakirti Sutra 維摩經, the
ninth chapter of which describes how an assembly of thirty-two bodhisattvas
express their opinions on entry into “the Dharma gate of nonduality” 不二法門
(cf. Dumoulin: 49-51). After the thirty-two bodhisattvas 菩薩 have voiced their
views, the dialogue above is unfolded between Vimalakirti 維摩詰 and Manjusri 文

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殊師利-- between the enlightened householder and the bodhisattva of wisdom.

According to the Sutra, Vimalakirti is silent when responding to Manjusri’s question,
and that is also mentioned in Yuan Wu’s commentary (Cleary & Cleary: 461).
The point I would like to elaborate on is the absence of the silence, or rather,
the silence of silence in this koan: Vimalakirti’s remaining silent is not even narrated in
this koan. Namely, not only Vimalakirti but also the narrator remains silent. The gap
created by the absence of Vimalakirti’s response in the narrative is even widened by
the inserted remark at the end by Master Hsueh Tou, who first collected the one
hundred koans on which Pi-yen lu was based. Since readers are not told about
Vimalakirti’s silence, Hsueh Tou’s remark adds another layer of pointlessness and
ambiguity to the already existing gap. As Yuan Wu observes, “Hsueh Tou didn’t say
that Vimalakirti kept silent, nor did he say that he sat silently on his seat” (Cleary &
Cleary: 461). The effect is that readers seem to be experiencing a state of
speechlessness, which can be said to be the enacting of silence. Hoffmann
comments on this koan: “[Manjusri] only says one should be silent. [Vimalakirti] is
silent” (285). I would add that the narrator re-enacts the silence.
Furthermore, I would like to further illustrate the silence of silence in the light
of the following passage from Heidegger’s “A Dialogue on Language” (1-54). The
two interlocutors are a Japanese scholar (J) and an inquirer (I), Heidegger himself.
J: Wherever the nature of language was to speak (say) to man as saying, it,
Saying, would bring about the real dialogue …
I: …which does not say “about” language but of language, as needfully
used of its very nature.
J: And it would also remain of minor importance whether the dialogue is
before us in writing, or whether it was spoken at some time and has now
faded.
I: Certainly -- because the one thing that matters is whether this dialogue, be
it written or spoken or neither, remains constantly coming.
J: The course of such a dialogue would have to have a character all its own,
with more silence than talk.

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I: Above all, silence about silence …

J: Because to talk and write about silence is what produces the most
obnoxious chatter…
I: Who could simply be silent of silence?
J: That would be authentic saying …
I: …and would remain the constant prologue to the authentic dialogue of
language. (52-53, original omission)
This passage comes from a context where Heidegger discusses the so-called
“hermeneutic circle,” that is, the hermeneutic model of understanding, or rather, the
relationship between message and message bearer. “The message-bearer must come
from the message…[and] he must also have gone toward it” (51). As Schofer
illustrates, “for Heidegger, the circle is a structural element of each human act of
understanding as such. It is the ‘hermeneutic’ circle: understanding, the (interpretive)
explanation of a phenomenon, is possible only insofar as the one who understands
brings with him … from his point of departure a certain preunderstanding in regard
to this phenomenon” (283). Heidegger considers understanding as part of the
structure of human existence. Equally important to human existence is language,
because it is not a mere tool of communication, but has existence of its own in
which human beings come to participate. This view of language is manifested in his
concept of “the Saying of language,” as mentioned in the dialogue quoted above.
“Saying [sagan] means to show: to let appear, to free in a way which is at the same
time clearing and hiding, taken in the sense of pro-offering of what we call world”
(Heidegger, quoted from Biemel: 88). Heidegger calls for a dialogue which is “from
out of language’s reality, and …be led to its reality” (51). As Bindeman interprets
Heidegger’s conception of language in relation to hermeneutics, “what is called for
is a dialogue that is the effect of this reality” (23). Arguably, the koan being
discussed exemplifies the “authentic saying” because of the silence of silence -- the
re-enacting of silence in the dialogue between Manjusri and Vimalakirti. This koan
exemplifies a dialogue that “remains constantly coming,” for silence is always
effected in the act of reading the dialogue, even though the dialogue originally

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occurred long time ago.

4. Conclusion

Drawing on insights from pragmatics, discourse studies, literary criticism, and

religious studies, this paper adopts a multidisciplinary perspective on silence. By
bringing this perspective to the analysis of silence in the two koan texts, this paper, I
hope, has shed new light on koan studies; namely, the koan, as a Ch’an Buddhist
genre, is not an area of study for philosophers and religious scholars only. It is a rich
source of materials for scholars interested in language and textual semiotics (cf.
Tseng). Equally important is the light that my analysis of the koans sheds on the
work dealing with silence. Silence is more than a conversational phenomenon in
face-to-face communication; how silence is represented in text is an issue yet to
explore. By analyzing how silence is represented in two selected koans, this paper
has demonstrated that silence and verbal expression are intricately intertwined.
Investigating silence in text, as in the case of the koans, is tantamount to an inquiry
into the nature of silence in the embodiment of narrator, reader, and text. Silence
can be studied in dialogic terms (cf. Bakhtin), that is, to study silence between
conversational interactants concerned, between narrator and reader, and between
silence itself and words. This area of research still needs further attention from
scholars concerned with how texts mean, not just what texts mean.

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文本中沉默的再現：以兩則禪宗公案為例
曾銘裕∗

提要

本 文 探 討 沉 默 在 敘 述 文 本 中 的 再 現 (representation)， 特 別 是 以 宗 教 文
本為例。本文提出四點來闡釋沉默和言辭表達之間的關係。
(一 ) 沉默是文本之要素及策略。
(二 ) 沉默溝通的行為。
(三 ) 沉默的力量猶如語言。
(四 ) 沉默再現的方式，即是沉默的意涵的一部份。
藉 由 分 析 二 則 禪 宗 公 案，本 文 將 試 論 文 本 如 何 來 敘 述 及 展 視 沉 默，及
沉默的意義為何。

關鍵詞: 公案，敘述策略，沉默，宗教話語，文本。

∗ 東華大學英美語文學系助理教授。

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