The old scribe Qi kept the kōans of the temple in a massive
book, known to us now as The Codeless Code. In its pages lay
the entire wisdom of the temple. Maintaining it was the
scribe’s most singular and sacred duty.
One day he was asked by a novice why the kōans were numbered
beginning with the number one.
“Would not zero have been more appropriate for our
profession?” queried the novice.
A look of horror crept over the old man’s face. With
trembling fingers he turned page after page of the temple’s
accounts. Indeed, every kōan, from first to last, had the
wrong number. And since all documents, databases, and
internal websites of the temple referenced the kōans by
number alone, the damage was irreparable.
The scribe was desolated. For seven days he sat huddled in a
corner of his office, staring at his inkless brush as though
it were a cobra poised to strike.
Silence spread through the temple like a sickness. Since no
new kōans were being set down, there was no subject for
discussion at the morning meetings and nothing for the
students to meditate upon in the afternoon. Finally, old
Jinyu—the venerable Abbess Over All Clans And Concerns—was
petitioned to resolve the matter.
The abbess rapped the scribe’s door sharply with her cane,
rousing the man from his misery.
“Young man,” she said (for the old scribe was still many
years her junior): “Is it not true that each day’s kōan is
produced by meditating upon the wisdom that the temple has
gained since the prior kōan was set down?”
“It is,” said the scribe, bowing deeply.
“Then your path is clear: go back to Kōan Number One,
subtract the wisdom that it teaches, and Kōan Number Zero
will be revealed. And likewise Kōan Minus One, and Minus
Two, and so on until the beginning of time itself.”
Thus was the scribe’s workload doubled, yet his misery
subtracted from itself.
