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I was more dead while I was alive. I was feeling more alive so I did not think that I was dead. It took three days for me to realise the fact that I had died.'
Children look foolish, and Jesus says, 'Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my Kingdom of God. In fact he is saying, 'Blessed are the fools.'
Children are fools, that's why everybody tries to make the children wise. The very effort to make them wise simply kills them. By and by they become afraid to live; their streaming life is crippled from everywhere, only a very narrow passage which is socially acceptable is allowed for them to live in. Then through that tunnel only, they somehow cling to life. That tunnel is just a very small thread -- they don't die, that's all, but they don't live either. They don't live at all. They somehow drag.
So if you sit in zazen and you move deeply into it, your mind will start falling away, and your mind has up to now been your cleverness, your so-called intelligence. Your mind has accumulated all your experiences, your past. And when the past starts withering away and you become fresh and alive in the moment, you are again like a child, again a fool.
Lao Tzu said, 'Everybody is clever except me. Everybody seems to be very calculating, I am just muddle-headed.'
It is related that Rabbi Hanuk told this story.
For a whole year I felt a longing to go to my master, Rabbi Bonon, and talk with him. But every time I entered the house I felt I was not man enough. Once though, when I was walking across the field and weeping, I knew that I must run to the rabbi without delay.
He asked, 'Why are you weeping?'
I answered, 'I am after all alive in this world, a being created with all the senses and all the limbs, but I do not know what it is I was created for, and what I am good for in this world.'
'Little fool,' he replied.'That's the same question I have carried around with me all my life. You will come and eat the evening meal with me today.'
Ordinarily we think people who know answers are wise. They may be learned but they are not wise. They may be very well informed, but information
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