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was nobody but Nanin himself. Then he enquired, 'Is he mad?'
'No,' the disciple said. 'You had asked if Nanin was in and he was saying yes. He was showing his "inness" and "isness". That moment he was a woodcutter; that moment, axe in his hand, he was totally absorbed in the sharpness of the axe. He was that sharpness in that moment. He was saying "I am in" by being so immediate, by being so totally in the present. You missed the point. He was showing you the quality of Zen.'
Zen is non-conceptual, non-intellectual. It is the only religion in the world which preaches immediacy; moment to moment immediacy; to be present in the moment, no past, no future.
But people have lived with theologies. And those theologies keep them childish, they don't allow them to grow. You cannot grow by being confined in a theology, by being a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or even a Buddhist. You cannot grow; you don't have space enough to grow. You are confined very much, in a very narrow space; you are imprisoned.
A young priest took a hundred thousand dollars from the church safe and lost it on the stock market. Then his beautiful wife left him. In despair he went down to the river and was just about to jump off the bridge when he was stopped by a woman in a black cloak with a wrinkled face and stringy gray hair.
'Don't jump,' she rasped. 'I'm a witch, and I'll grant you three wishes if you do something for me!'
'I'm beyond help,' he replied.
'Don't be silly,' she said. ,'Alakazam! The money is back in the church vault. Alakazam! Your wife is home waiting for you with love in her heart. Alakazam! You now have two hundred thousand dollars in the bank!'
'That's w-w-wonderful,' stuttered the priest. 'What do I have to do for you?'
'Spend the night making love to me.'
The thought of sleeping with the toothless old hag was repellent, but certainly worth it, so they retired to a nearby motel. In the morning, the distasteful ordeal over, the priest was dressing to go home when the bat in the bed said, 'Say sonny, how old are you?'
'I'm forty-two!' he replied. 'Why?'
'Ain't you a little old to believe
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