At mid-century White created several “sequences,” ordered series of interrelated photographs. Likening each to “a cinema of stills,” White hoped his viewers would contemplate and appreciate these evocatively titled sequences formally and metaphorically to reach for a higher spirituality. In the 1950s, White became increasingly interested in Buddhism, particularly its Zen tradition. Indeed, the title "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" derives from a well-known Buddhist koan, a paradoxical question or story used to prompt the interrogation of perceived reality. White took the first photograph, which resembles a Buddhist monk’s begging bowl—but which is actually an image of an old water tank—and later recounted how “the rest of the photographs appeared slowly over a two-year period.”