| |
back into some manifestation. The way Zen looks at the world, it does not make anybody feel guilty; neither does it make anybody feel superior. The source is the same, the game is the same. Of course, different players have to play from different sides.
GENUINE ZEN EXPERIENCE CONSISTS EXCLUSIVELY IN THIS "TAKING AWAY OF MAN AND OBJECT." THIS COMPLETE NOT-NESS IS THE ORIGINAL PLACE FROM WHICH ALL THINKING AND KNOWING SPRING. BUT EVEN IF ONE IS PERMITTED TO SPEAK OF A "PLACE" AT ALL, SUCH TERMINOLOGY IS ONLY PROVISIONAL.
You cannot call it even a place; it is only space.
EVEN IF ONE WANTED TO CHARACTERIZE IT AS UNBORN-NESS, OR AS NIRVANA, OR AS TRUTH, ONE COULD NEVER HIT IT.
One has just touched on it. No word can reach to the very heart of existence.
IT LIES BEYOND ALL TERMINOLOGY AND EXPRESSION; THINKING CANNOT REACH THAT FAR.
But silence can divulge as much depth as you have courage for. What words cannot manage to express, your silence can express, your laughter can express, because laughter is coming from the depth of your heart. It is just like a flower.
Words are first put into you just the way computers are fed full of all the information that they have. Then you can ask them and they will repeat it. That does not make them very great learned scholars. But that is what your learned scholars are. They have not a single word of their own to say.
The cosmic origin of things is beyond our intellect, our mind, our words. But in deep silence we reach it. We feel the dance of it, we hear the music of it, we feel the unknown fragrance of it.
There is a Zen saying:
TEN YEARS OF DREAMS IN THE FOREST!
NOW ON THE LAKE'S EDGE LAUGHING,
LAUGHING A NEW LAUGH.
TEN YEARS OF DREAMS IN THE FOREST! -- because a meditator does not just one day become a meditator; dreams follow, for years. Even if you go into the deepest forest, those dreams haunt you. But slowly slowly those dreams settle down because there is no point. You are no more interested in them; on the contrary you simply sit there watching.
This watchfulness makes you so silent that when sitting by the lake's edge, laughing...
|
|
|