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It keeps you deluded, it keeps you in a kind of dream state.
Ikkyu says:
"WE COME INTO THIS WORLD ALONE,
WE DEPART ALONE..."
Togetherness is illusory. Aloneness is more fundamental. Love is illusory, meditation is more fundamental -- but ultimately that too is illusory. That's where Ikkyu goes one step ahead and takes the quantum leap. You have heard it said many times: "We come alone into this world, and we depart alone." But Ikkyu says:
THIS ALSO IS ILLUSION.
I WILL TEACH YOU THE WAY
NOT TO COME, NOT TO GO!
That is Zen, pure Zen. The ordinary religion teaches: Love is illusory. Zen finally teaches: Even meditation is illusory. Let me make it clear to you. Love means togetherness -- the possibility of being together, the possibility of being lost into each other, the possibility of communication, the possibility of relating. When love fails, utterly fails, you start moving towards meditation. Meditation means the capacity to be alone. They are polarities, love and meditation. Meditation means the capacity not to relate -- there is no need to relate, one is enough unto oneself.
Many people go on clinging to the world of love; a few escape from it, and then they go on clinging to the world of meditation. Zen says: If you cling to the world of meditation, if you start clinging to your aloneness, you are still far away from the truth. Because if togetherness is false, how can aloneness be true?
This is the great revolution that Zen brings into the world of religion. If togetherness is false then aloneness can't be true either -- because aloneness can be understood only in the context of togetherness. If love is false then meditation can't be true either. Those who have decided for meditation AGAINST love, they have chosen a polarity. And the polarity depends on the other.
Just think: if darkness is false, how can light be true? If pain is false, how can happiness be true? If birth is false, how can death be true? If 'I' is false, how can 'thou' be true? -- or vice versa. They exist as pairs. Love and meditation are a couple, married for ever.
And if you observe silently the functioning
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