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God, I was alive!" -- but now it was too late.
Most people will realize only when death strikes, "I have lived without living. I have not danced, I have not blossomed, I have not known myself, and death has come." And death means all doors are being closed. Now one knows nothing of what is going to happen. There is no more future. You cannot plan for tomorrow, and all yesterdays are gone -- great opportunities to become awakened, great opportunities to become a buddha.
You have missed.
Rinzai goes on, "NEVER EVER SPECULATE HAPHAZARDLY. UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH WRONG."
This a tremendously important statement: UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH WRONG. Ordinarily you will say, "Understanding is right and not understanding is wrong." But I will support Rinzai. He is right. It is not a question of understanding or not understanding, it is a question of realizing.
For example, a blind man can understand what light is intellectually, but what is that understanding? A blind man can write a treatise on light, on colors, and can be very logically right. But what is that understanding? He has never seen colors.... And this is the situation.
People are writing about God, describing in detail as if they have seen God, quarreling with others because they have a different conception of God. For thousands of years people have been fighting about God, about heaven and hell, and nobody seems to realize the fact that these are all hypotheses. Nobody has seen God. So if somebody says, "I understand about God," it is as futile as not understanding about God.
The question is knowing -- directly, straightforwardly. The question is being one with the truth, not knowing the truth from far away, from others' experience, from scriptures. You cannot borrow truth; it is not a commodity.
You have to become the truth.
Even if a person says, "I have seen truth," it is wrong, because you cannot see truth -- truth is not something material -- neither can you see God. If you see, it is hallucination.
That's why Buddha has said to his disciples, "If I meet you on the way, just don't hesitate, cut off
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