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to see them as they are."
And again: "Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything -- since everything lies open to view, there is nothing to explain."
Yes, life is a mystery, and there is nothing to explain -- because everything is just open, it is just in front of you. Encounter it! Meet it! Be courageous! That is the whole standpoint of Zen.
NOW LET ME help you to enter into this beautiful story. I will not explain it. I can just seduce you to enter into it. I can simply allure you to enter into it. I can only persuade you to have a taste of it.
BUTEI, THE EMPEROR OF RYO, SENT FOR FU-DAISHI TO EXPLAIN THE DIAMOND SUTRA.
Now the Diamond Sutra is really a Kohinoor; it is one of the most significant utterances ever uttered on this earth. Buddha's sayings in the Diamond Sutra are the most precious. But the basic thing in the Diamond Sutra is that nothing can be explained, that life is utterly unexplainable; that life is such that all explanations fall short, that all philosophies prove very narrow. The sky of life is so vast that there is no way to confine it in any hypothesis or doctrine.
Buddha himself never used to talk about metaphysical problems. He made a list of ten or twelve problems, and before he entered a town or a city his disciples would go and declare in the town: "Don't ask about these twelve problems because he will not answer." Not that he cannot answer -- if he cannot answer then who will answer? -- but that these problems are unanswerable. They are better left not touched; better they are left alone.
Nobody should ask about God. Buddha would not say God is; he would not say God is not -- because he said both are irrelevant. To say God is, is as irrelevant as to say God is not -- because that which is, is beyond the positive and the negative. That which is, it is beyond the minus and the plus. That which is cannot be said 'is' and cannot be said 'is not'. It is far beyond both. That which is, it is beyond dichotomy, it is beyond dialectics, it is beyond duality. 'Is' and 'is not' create a duality. Existence is one, organically one; it comprehends both.
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