where does your fist go?

To illustrate how thought and language distort our perception of reality, the great twentieth century Zen Philosopher, Alan Watts, once posed the question, “Where does my fist go when I open my hand?” Watts wrote that in this question the word “fist” is “a verb masquerading as a noun.” He explained that a fist is an activity rather than a physical thing, but that our conceptual thinking hides this fact. If this is so, then are there any physical things anywhere? For example, where does a rock go when it erodes? Where does a cloud go when it dissipates? Where do we go when our body ceases to breathe? Every form that we conceive will eventually lose its form. A rock obviously holds its form longer than a cloud, but the principle is the same. Why, then, do we believe that something continues after our own bodily form disappears? Is it dreaming, or is there some part of us that survives our loss of form? If we have a soul, for example, why doesn’t a fist have a soul? The question about the fist is not nearly as trivial as it might at first seem.
To help sense the truth, we might open and close our hand several times. We could contemplate rather than think about what we see. We might look at this activity with our eyes rather than with our thought habits. Where does our fist come from and where does it go? Why do we imagine that we see a thing called a fist at all? In fact, when we look at the visual field in front of our eyes, our intellect creates an amazing illusion. First, it conceives form and void. Next, it symbolizes our concepts of form and void with words. Then, it repeats this sequence of events so often that we mistake the thoughts and words for the truth. Our intellect divides a seamless action into static states. It is like taking a still-life photograph when we need a video camera to capture the truth. A still-life photograph cannot capture motion. In the same way we see concepts of form rather than the truth. As we do this over and over again, we begin to think that these static images are the truth. This deadly mental process is so subtle and so habitual that it usually goes unexamined.
It is easy to understand that different words can represent the same form. For example, we could call a fist a “furkle” if we wished. However, it is not as easy to understand that concepts of form are equally arbitrary and artificial. Mistakenly, we imagine that the things we imagine are separate things rather than products of imagination. The process of conception thereby creates a kind of mirage that blinds us to reality. A fist is actually a concept a way of statically picturing an aspect of the truth. It is a way of mentally freezing the action. Rocks, trees, and human beings are also concepts. The reality from which these forms are abstracted is beyond all concepts or words! As we grow from childhood to adulthood our thinking gradually creates the illusion that the universe is a big thing composed of many little things, but it simply isn’t true!
The act of conception artificially divides something that is fundamentally indivisible. In the process, it destroys something holy. Conception is the reason that Adam had to leave the Garden of Eden (the real world); he began to create and then live in an imaginary world created by his intellect. He began to conceive ideas of physical objects, ideas of qualities, ideas of relationships, and ideas of measurement. He thereby lost the one thing that transcends all ideas. Each child goes through the same process symbolized by Adam. Born innocent and unified with reality, each child learns to imagine a world composed of things. The challenge of the spiritual life is to find a way to escape that imagined world.
To break free of the illusion that the world is composed of things, we must learn to look without seeing form and void. For example, can we look at our hand without imagining that it is a hand? Can we see what is in front of our eyes without imagining anything? Can we look at the action in front of our eyes without psychologically freeze-framing it? Can we look at the world and not see it as if it were divided into abstract states?
When we first try to see the world without conception, our thoughts will carry us away, but each time that happens, we must bring ourselves back to what our eyes see. We must look until we can see what Is.
The good news that Buddha and every other great spiritual teacher has taught is that the ordinary world of time, space, and objects is an illusion; it is like thinking that we see a fist when we close our hand. Like fists, human bodies appear for a few moments and then disappear. Where do these bodies come from and where do they go? Doesn’t it seem strange that we are not concerned about where we came from? If we do not know where we came from, why should we be concerned about where we are going? Our ordinary thinking about this issue hides the startling truth.
To see through the illusion of thingness requires that we leave the world of the intellect and see who and what we are. In fact, we were here before this body appeared and we will be here long after this body has disappeared. Anyone who is willing to make the effort can wake up and verify this simple fact. It does not require ideas, beliefs, faith, or religious rituals. It only requires using our perception in a different way.
The fist that seems to disappear when we uncurl our fingers does not go away. It is still here. Can we see it? Every single fist that we have ever made in our life is still here! Even if we had wanted to get rid of all of those fists, where could we have put them? No matter where we look, there is only one amazing thing before our eyes. Can we see it?
If we choose to identify with a human body, then we must die when this body dies. However, if we choose not to be attached to a personal identity, then we will perceive something quite different. Forms come and go, but the field from which forms appear and disappear is infinite. The field is who we are.