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or dancing... one day suddenly you move so fast in dance that the very idea that you are, cannot be retained. You move so fast that you become total. Run fast and see. Dance fast and see. Whirl fast and see. Suddenly the action becomes so total it takes possession of you -- the ego drops.
DATE-JITOKU, A FINE WAKA POET,
WANTED TO MASTER ZEN.
Now the wrong journey starts. You cannot master zen. You can be mastered by zen, but you cannot master it. It is not a skill to be mastered, it is not a technique to be mastered. It is your very being... to be possessed by it. It is your totality.
WITH THIS IN MIND
HE MADE AN APPOINTMENT
TO SEE EKKEI,
ABBOT OF SHOKOKUJI IN KYOTO.
WITH THIS IN MIND.... If you come to a master with anything in the mind, you never come. If you have come to me with anything in the mind, you have not come at all. You have travelled, but you have not come. You are still travelling; you have not arrived. If you have come with nothing in the mind, you have come. Then you are close to me.
With nothing in the mind, mind disappears -- because the mind can only be there if something is in the mind. The mind cannot exist without the content. The mind is nothing but the total of the contents. If the contents disappear, the mind disappears.
If you have come to me with something in the mind -- that you have to achieve something, that you have to be something: some ideal that you are chasing, some image that you have to fulfill -- then you will miss me. You will miss me utterly. To be with me, there is only one way: come to me without anything in the mind so that you are open -- so that you are open for all things. If you have something in the mind, you are not open for all things. Then you are closed.
WITH THIS IN MIND
HE MADE AN APPOINTMENT
TO SEE EKKEI...
Ekkei was one of the rare masters. You will see why I call him rare.
JITOKU WENT TO THE MASTER FULL OF HOPES...
You should come to a master only when all your hopes have failed. To be full of hopes is to be in the world. A man who is living still with hopes is still living in the future, in the
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