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Main Index
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You can renounce everything possible, but you are still there. You cannot renounce yourself. And you are the problem!
`Avoid' is the word I am against. And any religion which teaches avoidance, I call cowardly.
Encounter reality, there is no point in avoiding. Encounter with intensity and totality, with awareness, and suddenly you will see you have reached a point within yourself where there is no heat, no cold, where there is no love, no hate, where there is no so-called life and no so-called death.
Within you is the center of the universal. It is always here, you don't have to go somewhere else to find it. Every going is going away from yourself. You have to stop going away, you have to start sinking in.
In Tozan's words... and he has expressed it with tremendous beauty and grandeur and in the language of lions.
TOZAN SAID, "WHY DON'T YOU GO WHERE THERE IS NO COLD OR HEAT?"
THE MONK SAID, "WHERE IS THE PLACE WHERE THERE IS NO COLD OR HEAT?"
This is the misery that has always happened between the master and the disciple. The master is talking about the inner space and the disciple is hearing about some place somewhere outside. The master does not deal with places, he deals with spaces.
TOZAN SAID, "WHEN COLD, LET IT BE SO COLD THAT IT KILLS YOU; WHEN HOT, LET IT BE SO HOT THAT IT KILLS YOU."
He is simply saying, "Be total in every situation whether it is cold or hot; be so total that your ego dies, that you are no more." In other words, the moment you are total you are not, but only a pure space. And that is your authentic reality.
Setcho's commentary:
A HELPING HAND, BUT STILL A THOUSAND-FATHOM CLIFF; SHO AND HEN: NO ARBITRARY DISTINCTION HERE.
THE ANCIENT EMERALD PALACE SHINES IN THE BRIGHT MOONLIGHT.
CLEVER KANRO CLIMBS THE STEPS -- AND FINDS IT EMPTY.
A few footnotes will be helpful to understand Setcho's commentary.
A LEGEND TELLS OF A CLEVER, FAST-RUNNING DOG, KANRO, THAT CHASED A HARE. BOTH RAN SO FAST THAT EVENTUALLY THEY FELL DEAD OF EXHAUSTION.
The monk who asked the question in the present case is being compared to Kanro.
Be so total
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