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Book Name: Eighty Four Thousand PoemsPrevious     Next
 

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed on to the computer. It is for reference purposes only.]

It is impossible to express the ultimate truth.

It is like a taste. If you have tasted, you know

If you have not tasted

There is no way to convey it.

A man who has not tasted honey cannot be made

To know what sweetness is.

The man who has never seen light is incapable

Of understanding anything said about light.

The person who has known and experienced

Even he finds it almost impossible to express it

Because language falls very short.

The experience is so vast

And language is so small.

The experience is so sacred

And language is so mundane

That there is no possibility of any bridging.

Hence truth has been known many times

And all those who have known

Have tried to express it

But they have all failed.

We are grateful that they tried

Because out of that effort life has been enriched.

We have beautiful scriptures: the sayings of

Zarathustra, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha

Are so beautiful, so precious

That without them there would

Have been no humanity

We would have been utterly poor.

But howsoever beautiful they are

They have not been able to express it.

And they all say that they have failed.

They have tried with their heart

They have tried in thousands of ways

In every possible way.

Buddha spoke for forty-two years continuously

But again and again the same cul-de-sac.

Something seems to be elusive, it escapes.

Just this morning

I was reading a Zen master, Sotoba.

The day he experienced truth

The day he became enlightened

He wrote these beautiful lines:

'The mountain -- Buddha's body

The torrent -- his preaching.

Last night, eighty-four thousand poems.

How, how make them understand?'

The experience is so vast

As if eighty-four thousand poems

Have suddenly arisen in you.

And

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