| |
than thirty. Because by that time a person becomes cunning, one has learned the tricks and the ways of the world.
But a child is intelligent because a child is more alert, more radiantly alert. See a child watching something. If a child is watching a snail just watch the child -- how alert, how totally in the moment he is. It is as if he has become just the eyes; his whole being is pouring through the eyes. A child is intelligent, an old man becomes cunning and clever. A child has no experience so he cannot use the past. He has to face the present.
And the whole Zen attitude is that you will have to become a child again; you will have to attain a second childhood in which you drop all experiences. Mind is nothing but a name for the whole accumulated past. Mind is not an entity really, just a piled-up past. If you disperse it, if the dust of the past is cleaned away from the mirror of your being, you will become intelligent. And only intelligence can know what truth is.
After a lecture a student said to Hegel, 'Professor Hegel, I am confused by your teaching because reality looks quite different.'
Hegel said, 'My dear friend, all the worse for reality.'
Zen is not a philosophy because philosophy means some doctrine about reality. Zen is a pure encounter with reality. It has no doctrine, it has no philosophy, it has no scriptures. It is just a direct encounter with reality. All scriptures belong to the mind, all philosophies belong to the mind and all doctrines are the cleverness of the mind. The mind goes on consoling itself through creating philosophies that it knows.
It is very difficult to remain in ignorance because it is very ego-shattering. So the mind creates philosophies and gives you an illusion of knowledge.
Zen is a way of knowing. It has no knowledge. It is just a methodology to know, to face, to encounter -- immediate, herenow, direct. It is a direct transmission.
Clemenceau, the French statesman, was asked by a diplomat what he thought about diplomats.
Clemenceau said, 'Diplomats are people who solve problems that have been created by other diplomats.'
That's what philosophers also
|
|
|