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it. Yes, it can be indicated.
Hence Zen Masters say: "Buddhas only show the moon -- don't cling to their fingers. They are just fingers showing the moon -- look at the moon. The fingers are not the moon. Fingers pointing to the moon are not the moon themselves."
Tao is only a word, very arbitrary, it means nothing. It is just a finger pointing to the isness of existence. The birds chirping, the trees standing silently, and you all sitting in a deep communion here with tremendous love in your hearts... THIS is it! But this is not an answer.
CHAO CHOU ASKED, "WHAT IS THE TAO?"
NAN CHUAN ANSWERED, "THE ORDINARY MIND IS TAO."
One of the greatest answers ever given, and one of the answers that contains the ultimate truth -- so simple yet so pregnant:
"THE ORDINARY MIND IS TAO."
What is the ordinary mind? When there is nothing in the mind when you are not desiring anything, when you are not asking for anything, when there are no questions in your mind, no queries, no curiosities, when there are no dreams stirring in your mind, no thoughts, no memories, no projections, no past, no future... then the mind is absolutely ordinary.
In that ordinary mind you will experience Tao because you will experience the isness. It is because of your desires, dreams and your drunkenness with your dreams that you go on missing that which is always available, that which is always confronting you, that which is without and within, that which you have never lost for a single moment even, that which even if you want to lose you cannot lose -- it is your very intrinsic nature. But so many thoughts in the mind create a cloud around you, and the traffic is always there.
Watch the traffic of the mind and you will be surprised: not for a single moment there is a gap. And whenever there is a gap there is a taste of Tao. A distant call of the cuckoo... and for a moment you forget all your thoughts. The call of the cuckoo is so beautiful, so penetrating; it goes like an arrow into your heart. For a moment everything stops... and suddenly you have a taste of Tao. You call it beauty because you don't know what it is. Yes, beauty is one of
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