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almost impossible to answer. But the master's very being is to bring the impossible within possible limits -- if not the moon itself, then at least the reflection. And the reflection can be brought. And through the reflection the moon can be found.
NANSEN SAID, "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE." This reminds me of Kabir. I don't think either knew of the other, but this is how Kabir used to answer questions, exactly the same. To anybody it may look like a puzzle, but it is not a puzzle. It is a way of indicating that which is impossible to say.
The experience is of nothingness. So when the experience of enlightenment happens, it is one; there is nothing else other than the illumination. But immediately you recognize the illumination, immediately recognition comes, it becomes two. At the moment you recognize, it is a vague recognition, not yet conceptualized. When you conceptualize it as enlightenment, as awakening, as buddhahood, it has already become three. When you say it to somebody else -- that is the transmission -- when you convey it, communicate to somebody else, it becomes four. And if the person to whom you have conveyed it understands it, it becomes five.
At each step you are going far away from nothingness, but nothing can be done about it. That's the nature of reality. Now it is no more a puzzle when you understand what they mean by ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE. On the five the transmission is complete.
THE MONK ASKED, "WHAT IS THAT WHICH WAS POSSESSED BY THE ANCIENTS?" `The ancients' does not mean the people of the old times. `The ancients' indicate the people who have reached the heights of consciousness. They are the real ancients, not in time but in consciousness. In time they may be contemporaries, they may be sitting by your side. As far as time is concerned you may be contemporary to a buddha. But his height of consciousness has taken him far away. He has become an ancient.
Ordinarily when a man becomes old, we don't call him ancient. He is just called old. But if the man becomes a buddha, then not only in time has he become old, grown up, ripe, but beyond time he has reached to the very source of life where
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