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| | | Book Name: Zen - The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest | Previous Next | |
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Sometimes the whole of it is reflected by the sun -- you see it. But as far as the moon is concerned, whether the sun reflects it or not, it is always there.
Just think of a mirror. You are standing before a mirror -- if the mirror disappears do you think you disappear? And you must have seen mirror houses, where there are many kinds of mirrors. In some mirrors you appear to be very tall, defeating the bamboos; in some others you appear to be very short, but very fat. What the mirror says is not the truth.
The truth is in you, unreflected.
You don't need any mirror to find it. You don't need any lamp to go inside because inside you, there is neither darkness nor light. It is something like twilight, when the sun sets and the night has not come yet -- the gap. In that gap, there is a light which is not coming from the sun.
This moment in India has been called sandhya. The word comes from a root, sandhi, the boundary line. From day to night, there is a gap when the day disappears and the night begins -- a discontinuity. Ordinarily sandhya means evening. But the mystics have used sandhya to mean meditation. They have used it as an indication of a quantum leap, when you move from the mind to no-mind.
This anecdote says that the moon remains itself, whether it is known or not known. And you are the moon. It is your freedom to know yourself or to remain ignorant. Nobody can force you to be enlightened and nobody can force you to remain unenlightened. It is just your mood. Just a small moment of silent watching ... and the explosion.
The moon has been one of the greatest objects of Zen poems, for the simple reason that it disappears and still it is there in its totality. In some way, it becomes your symbolic representation.
Takuan wrote:
THE MOON HAS NO INTENT
TO CAST ITS SHADOW ANYWHERE,
NOR DOES THE POND DESIGN TO LODGE THE MOON:
HOW SERENE THE WATER OF HIROSAWA!
Hirosawa is the lake where Takuan lived. What he is saying is that existence has a quality of desirelessness. Still everything happens, but it is not motivated.
THE MOON HAS NO INTENT TO CAST ITS SHADOW ANYWHERE although
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