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be wrong. How can you say anything about silence? To say something will be falsifying it. That's why Lao Tzu says Nothing can be said about Tao -- and if something is said, in the very saying of it, it has become untrue. Tao is silent. But that silence is not the silence of a cemetery. It is the silence of a garden where trees are alive breathing and yet there is utter silence. It is not a dead silence, it is an alive silence. Hence he has called it 'The Song of Meditation'.
Buddha says: My approach to reality is not of belief but of seeing. His religion has been qualified as 'IHI PASSIKA: Come and see.' Not as 'Come and believe.' Buddha says 'Come and see: IHI PASSIKA.' It is here, present -- you just come and see. He does not require you to believe. He is the only great teacher in the world who dropped belief -- and with dropping belief he transformed religion from a very low childish stature to a very mature thing. With Buddha religion became young. Otherwise it was childish. It was a kind of belief -- belief is superstition, belief is out of fear. And belief is blind. Buddha has given eyes to religion. He says: See, and there is no need to believe. And when you have seen then it will not be a belief, it will be knowing.
In this song of Hakuin you will see the way of seeing -- how to open the eyes. Because truth is always there, has been always there. It is not that the truth has to be produced. Buddha says: YATHA BHUTAM -- It is! It is already there, it is confronting you! It is in the east, it is in the west, it is in the north, it is in the south. It surrounds you -- it is without and it is within. But you will have to see it: IHI PASSIKA. Your eyes are closed, you have forgotten how to open them. Meditation is nothing but the art of opening your eyes. The art of cleansing your eyes. the art of dropping the dust that has gathered on the mirror of your consciousness. It is natural, dust gathers. Man has been traveling and traveling for thousands of lives -- dust gathers. We are all travelers, much dust has gathered -- so much so that the mirror has completely disappeared. There is only dust upon dust, layers and layers of dust, and you cannot
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