The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really
 exist—the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and
 the morrow which never comes.
 For all these things are a deception of symbols pretending to be realities, and to seek after
 them is like walking straight into a wall upon which some painter has, by the convention
 of perspective, suggested an open passage.
 In short, Zen begins at the point where there is nothing further to seek, nothing to be
 gained.
 Zen is most emphatically not to be regarded as a system of self-improvement or a way of
 becoming a Buddha.
 In the words of Lin Chi, "If a man seeks the Buddha, that man loses the Buddha."
 For all ideas of self-improvement and of becoming or getting something in the future relate
 solely to our abstract image of ourselves.
 To follow them is to give ever more reality to that image.
 On the other hand, our true, non-conceptual self is already the Buddha, and needs no improvement.
 In the course of time it may grow, but one does not blame an egg for not being a chicken;
 still less does one criticize a pig for having a shorter neck than a giraffe.
 What is, therefore, to be gained from Zen is called wu-shi, or nothing special.
 For as the Buddha says, "I obtained not the least thing from unexcelled complete awakening,
 and for this very reason it is called unexcelled complete awakening."
 The expression of wu-shi also has the sense of the perfectly natural and unaffected, in
 which there is no fuss or business.
 The attainment of satori is often suggested by the old Chinese poem, "Mount Lu in misty
 rain, The river Che at high tide.
 When I had not been there, No rest from the pain of longing.
 I went there and returned.
 It was nothing special.
 Mount Lu in misty rain, The river Che at high tide.
 According to the famous saying of Ching Yuan, "Before I had studied Zen for thirty years,
 I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters.
 When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains
 are not mountains and waters are not waters.
 But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest, for it is just that I see mountains
 once again as mountains and waters once again as waters."
 The difficulty of Zen is, of course, to shift one's attention from the abstract to the concrete,
 from the symbolic self to one's true nature.
 So long as we merely talk about it, so long as we turn over ideas in our minds about symbol
 and reality, or keep repeating, "I am not my idea of myself," this is still mere abstraction.
 Zen created the method of direct pointing in order to escape from this vicious circle,
 in order to thrust the real immediately to our notice.
 When reading a difficult book, it is of no help to think, "I should concentrate," for
 one thinks about concentration instead of what the book has to say.
 Likewise, in studying or practicing Zen, it is of no help to think about Zen.
 To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of
 Zen.
 For this reason, the masters talk about Zen as little as possible and throw its concrete
 reality straight at us.
 This reality is the suchness of our natural nonverbal world.
 When Tungshan was asked, "What is the Buddha?" he answered, "Three pounds of flax."
 Upon this, Yuanwu comments, "Various answers have been given by different masters to the
 question 'What is the Buddha?'
 None, however, can excel Tungshan's 'three pounds of flax' as regards its irrationality,
 which cuts off all passage of speculation."
 The masters are resolute in cutting short all theorizing and speculation about these
 answers.
 Direct pointing entirely fails in its intention if it requires or stimulates any conceptual
 comment.
 Another master was having tea with two of his students when he suddenly tossed his fan
 to one of them, saying, "What's this?"
 The student opened it and fanned himself.
 "Not bad," was his comment.
 "Now you," he went on, passing it to the other student, who at once closed the fan and scratched
 his neck with it.
 This done, he opened it again, placed a piece of cake on it, and offered it to the master.
 This was considered even better, for when there are no names the world is no longer
 classified in limits and bounds.
 Professor Irving Lee of Northwestern University used to hold up a matchbox before his class,
 asking, "What's this?"
 The students would usually drop squarely into the trap and say, "A matchbox."
 At this, Professor Lee would say, "No, no, it's this," throwing the matchbox at the class
 and adding, "Matchboxes annoys.
 Is this a noise?"
 A Zen master might hold up his hand to someone insisting that there are real differences
 in the world and say, "Without saying a word, point to the difference between my fingers."
 At once it is clear that sameness and difference are abstractions.
 The same would have to be said of all categorizations of the concrete world.
 Even concrete itself, for such terms as physical, material, objective, real, and existential,
 are simply abstract symbols.
 Indeed, the more one tries to define them, the more meaningless they turn out to be.
 Thank you.


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.64 sec
Decoding  : 0.46 sec
Transcribe: 461.22 sec
Total Time: 462.32 sec