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about the absolute -- how can it think about the absolute that it has not known? At the most it can become a parrot: it can repeat scriptures but those scriptures will not be its own realization.
And unless something is your own realization, it is just an unnecessary burden.
... AND YOU HAVE A TREASURE
BEYOND THE HOPE OF BUDDHA AND THE MIND.
THE EAST BREEZE FONDLES THE HORSE'S EARS:
HOW SWEET THE SMELL OF PLUM.
Zen is very poetic, it says things not in syllogisms but in poetry. It is symbolic.
Socrates or Plato or Aristotle will talk in syllogisms, in logic. Their statements will be rational. Zen speaks through poetry. Its statements are indirect indications, fingers pointing to the moon -- but the finger is not the moon.
Another Zen poet says, you simply must be empty, empty of everything:
SIMPLY YOU MUST EMPTY "IS" OF MEANING,
AND NOT TAKE "IS NOT" AS REAL.
Isness is your reality, just pure isness, unnamed, with no boundaries, with no limits.
But be so empty that the whole sky of your consciousness is without clouds. In that emptiness grows the ultimate understanding -- what Buddha calls the Lotus Paradise. In that emptiness you become one with the cosmic soul.
And without this realization your life is worthless.
A poem by Sozan:
A ROOTLESS TREE,
YELLOW LEAVES SCATTERING.
BEYOND THE BLUE --
CLOUDLESS, STAINLESS.
Just a description... I will repeat:
A ROOTLESS TREE...
The sky has no roots anywhere.
... YELLOW LEAVES SCATTERING.
BEYOND THE BLUE --
CLOUDLESS, STAINLESS.
This beyondness is your nature, this beyondness is your buddha. Once found, you have found the host.
Question 1
A question from Maneesha:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
CAN ONLY THE EYES OF ENLIGHTENMENT SEE EMPTINESS?
Maneesha, these are only different ways of saying the same thing -- emptiness, enlightenment, the eyes of enlightenment, the wisdom of enlightenment, the illumination of enlightenment. These are only different ways of talking about the ultimate realization within. It is so vast that it can
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