Koans

In general, the master and the disciple are joined in a koan. I imagine the master completely calm and serene, and the disciple tense and nervous. If a guru is nervous, he’s not a master; he’s a disciple. On the other hand, if he scratches his butt, he’s a master. Hoshu stated this very idea in a marvelous sentence: “When a common man knows, he becomes wise; when a wise man knows, he becomes common.”

A historical anecdote about Hoshu’s life shows how he practiced his teachings in his daily life.

Someone went to visit Hoshu for the first time. At the end of the garden, the visitor saw a magnificent old man seated in profound meditation. He immediately asked the gardener if the old man was Hoshu. The gardener replied, “absolutely not. I’m Hoshu. That’s my best student.”

Upon meeting great masters, you might think that their search hasn’t ended. The fact of the matter is these masters don’t behave as such. They’re invisible. They’re ordinary men who have followed their path to its completion.

A monk fell asleep while meditating in a temple. As he slept, he knocked over a small candle that caught all the wooden decorations adorning the temple on fire. By the time he awakened, the flames were wreaking havoc in the temple. Since the temple was constructed entirely of stone, it withstood the fire with the exception of the floorboards. Before escaping the flames, the monk decided to save a large wooden Buddha. Although he was weak, he somehow managed to muster the miraculous strength necessary to pick up the two hundred pound statue. When he got to the door, he realized that the wooden Buddha was twice as wide as the opening. It would be impossible to get it through. The walls were too solid and wouldn’t budge. Nevertheless, the monk didn’t want to just leave the Buddha he adored to burn inside. What could he do to get out unharmed with his treasure?

How did the monk get the Buddha out? The Japanese ask some rather interesting questions. Some say there are those who have spent twenty years trying to solve such riddles.

The answer is no joke: the monk picked up the Buddha on his back, opened the door and walked out.

Many Zen legends revolve around the same theme and have the same meaning. For example:

Imagine that you’re completely trapped in by stone. How do you get out? You get out taking a step forward, or a step aside.

“A goose lays an egg inside a bottle. Later, the egg hatches and a baby goose appears. How does he get out of the bottle?” asks the master of his disciple.

The monk withdraws to meditate. Twenty years later he requests an interview with the master, announcing he’s solved the koan.

The story of the stone temple with its inflammable floorboards and Buddha is a mental story. It’s entirely invented by our brain. We’ve united a certain quantity of facts in the form of a problem to be solved, but we need to understand that all of the facts are mental, totally invented. The narrow door in the koan is no more difficult than we make it out to be. All the facts are creations of the spirit; they’re false.

We’re the ones who impose the limit of the smallness of the door. Therefore, given that the door has the same nature as the Buddha and the rest of the story, we’re the ones who must solve the problem by ourselves instantaneously.

There are many people who, carrying the weight of their past, stumble over problems. They’re comparable to the monk who must face the small door. They say:

In my own life, I’ve come upon tons of unreal problems. When I would try to overcome them, I’d collide with my own impossibilities. I had principles that limited me and impeded my advancement deeply rooted in my intellect. My family history was the ferment of my limits. Before my birth, and even my conception, I had been programmed to create a narrow door that would keep me prisoner.

In general terms, we all experience difficult and sometimes terribly painful problems that are nothing more than the fruit of our imagination, creations of our mind.

First, the wooden Buddha doesn’t exist. Even so, we carry it. Why do we bog ourselves down with such a weight?

Third, the fire doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, we give it such realism that it ends up burning us. Why do we burn? We’re the ones who create our own fire that destroys us. Why do we wish to put ourselves in this drama?

Finally, the narrow door doesn’t exist. We’re its prisoners; nevertheless we could cross it at any moment.

While meditating, the master Ou-Tsou was interrupted by a disciple eager to hear his teaching. Ou-Tsou carefully observed the disciple then slowly drew a circle on the ground with the character for “water” inside. He looked over at his disciple to see if he had picked up on the meaning of his gesture, but the disciple looked absolutely bewildered.

The master was deeply meditating. For him, meditation is the actualization of something real within himself.

What he does isn’t to satisfy an audience, such as his parents, his family, society, etc., rather he does so because he feels the necessity. It’s beyond any type of morality. It’s who he is. He doesn’t look for anybody’s love or blessing. He meditates because he believes in it. He believes in himself. He’s liberated.

His parents probably didn’t condition him, as do most parents, to see the world exactly as they do; in other words, “if you want me to love you, see the world as I do and be what I want you to be.” Neither did the master feel the obligation to limit himself within a romantic relationship; in other words, “put on blinders, don’t look right or left, just look at me.”

The disciple arrives, hungry for knowledge. Ou-Tsou draws a circle, or anything that’s closed, then he draws the symbol for “water” inside. It’s like a cup full of water. He gives the disciple a concept. So how do you drink a concept? We carry out our acts, we live them. Words are nothing more than words. The word “water” doesn’t quench thirst.

The master doesn’t have any knowledge to offer. He offers his disciple his own request:

“You asked me for a concept. You want me to talk to you, to explain something to you. Instead of seeking explanations, be! If you’re thirsty, drink water, not my concepts. I can teach you to learn, but I can’t give you the Being that you are.”

Then the master gets up and leaves the room, concluding, “I have nothing to say.”

Buddha is a spiritual state, a state of awakening, of complete consciousness outside the intellect.

“What’s a Buddha?” The student’s question is absurd. He’s looking for an intellectual definition where the intellect has no place.

The master immediately gives him the solution. Instead of giving him a discourse on the ego, he asks the student: “And who are you?” In other words: “Who are you to want to know the state of complete perfection? Who do you think you are?”

Generally speaking, he’s taught us to minimize ourselves. Why would we be a Buddha? Who are we? It’s better not to have a definition of Buddha. To know who we are and our true worth are much more useful.

The student replies, “Me? I’m me!” Here again he’s speaking like an idiot. The me he describes is the day to day me, the limited me, the one we’ve forged since childhood. He’s talking about the blocks and limits he’s integrated into himself over the course of his upbringing.

By saying “I’m me,” the student expresses to what point it seems natural to see himself as a limited man who conceives of Buddha outside of himself.

This answer makes the master impatient; he asks, “Do you know this me or no?” His question is quite clear: “Do you know the me you’re speaking of? Do you suffer from your personality or do you know it?” We all need to answer these questions. Do we suffer what happens to us? Are we the storm or are we the blue sky where the storm takes place? In this blue sky, the storm appears and later disappears, but the sky remains constant.

I worked with a couple in the midst of a crisis. I told the woman, “you’re furious because he dealt you a low blow. Face your anger and vent it off. Don’t attach yourself to it; that’s being theatrical. Leave your complaints behind and let everything that’s positive and essential in your relationship surface.”

After a moment, the woman told her partner, “you hurt me, but I love you. In spite of everything, I’m afraid to love you because I know that if you keep treating me like you do, you’re going to wound my heart.”

Then I told her, “Let him do it! Offer him your heart so he can wound it. Don’t offer it like a masochistic victim, rather knowing that behind the pain is complete peace. If you operate like that, your consciousness will never be harmed.”

She contemplated my words then turned to her partner and said, “I love you even though you hurt my heart.”

Then she began to cry and a couple minutes later her relationship reestablished itself.

Then, the master picks up an object and says, “Do you see this?” The student responds, “I see it.” But he doesn’t understand. That’s why the master ends the conversation.

You need to see Buddha. You need to see Buddha in and of itself, like a flyswatter sees itself. If I don’t see him, how will I know him? When I meditate, I do so to see what I am. You are Buddha. It’s very hard to make a beginner understand this.

“How does an enlightened being return to the common world after meditating?” asks a Buddhist monk of Kahon.

“A broken mirror never reflects again. Fallen flowers never return to their old stems,” answers Kahon.

I once had to conduct a session in which everyone entered in a trance. We had done a profound meditation. Upon terminating, one participant asked me: “What we’ve done is amazing, but how can we live in the world once we leave here?”

Another time, I presented a passionate Kabalistic text and someone concluded, “this is very beautiful, but what happens when we’re out there in the ‘real world’?”

These questions indicate that the people who ask them haven’t learned anything. They also mean: “Your teaching is completely useless. I’ve resolved nothing by it. I advance a little bit with you, but then when I’m back in the world out there, everything’s erased because the world isn’t like you say it is. What do I do?”

Kahon answers: “When the mirror breaks, it never reflects again. When the flowers fall, they never return to their old stems.” With that, he’s saying: “You need to ask that question of yourself. Stop worrying about tomorrow. Live the experience and you’ll see right away. If you deeply penetrate enlightenment, you’ll go into the world knowing what’s going on. Once we break the mirror, it never reflects again. Once we break the ego, it disappears. When the flowers fall, they never return to the stems. They lie on the ground, in place. When we make a change, the change gives us a new place in the world.”

Learn to make use of three conditions. First, to want to acquire knowledge; second, to know we can acquire it and to make its acquisition; and third, to accept the change this new knowledge effects.

Most people stumble over the last point. They do everything necessary to change, but when the change comes, they say, “What’s going to happen when I return to the world?”

Listen. Do your work. Meditate. Find yourself. Then return to the world and there you’ll see what happens. Don’t tell me, “yeah, but…” Do what you have to do. Seek. Live. Don’t create obstacles to your actualization under the pretext that the world doesn’t have the beauty you’ve found inside yourself. Let your internal beauty surface and achieve your self-realization without asking what will happen later or how others might react.

Each of us has a place in the world. There are, of course, places for the demented and for sadists, but there are also places for people who work on themselves. There’s a place for positive people, for those who work to create their divinity, for those who don’t accept negativity. Knowing this, which place will you choose?

As for me, I prefer to live and to contemplate a flower rather than what’s rotten. That’s how the Fool of the Marseille Tarot proceeds. Looking at the card, we see he’s walking on marvelous white flowers. He goes from one place of purity to another and he achieves self-realization.

If the world were completely imperfect, we’d have no element of comparison to know as much. Then the world would be perfect. For imperfection to exist, we need to have little islands of perfection in its midst as our reference points.

Instead of going from imperfection to imperfection, from stain to stain, look for lapses in the system, the spaces of perfection, and make your way by them. That’s how you’ll find joy.

The bird and the fish need to be in the appropriate element for that element to be infinite: the bird would drown in water and the fish would suffocate in air.

A disciple asked Hoshu: “If the spirit of Buddha is in everything, is it also in a dog?”

Having seen Hoshu bark to answer the previous question, the disciple made the motion of catching the sky with his hands. Hoshu grabbed his nose and twisted it. While the disciple brutally freed himself and rubbed his sore nose, Hoshu declared, “I just caught the sky.”

One day, Chan the monk said to his friend Lin, another monk, “If you want to know the master’s teaching, ask him what enlightenment is.”

Lin approached the master and when he asked his question, the master hit him with his cane.

Confused, the monk went to tell Chan of his adventure. The latter marveled at the master’s response and suggested Lin return to him with the same question. Lin returned to the master, repeated the question, and received another beating with the cane.

When Chan found out Lin had received the same response a second time, he marveled again and asked if the master had understood. Lin opened his eyes wide. What’s to understand? Chan advised him a third time to return to the master, thus Lin received yet another beating with the cane.

Upset, Lin abandoned the monastery. He went out looking for a new master. In another province, he found one of great repute. He told this master he had been beaten each time he asked his question. The wise man was receptive and compassionate toward him.

Stupefied and without understanding a thing, Lin returned to his old monastery. He looked for Chan and told him of his misadventure.

This news deeply troubled Lin and filled him with a sudden new understanding. He grabbed his shovel and, heading toward the cemetery, announced, “I’m going to dig up the master’s bones to continue with his teachings.”

As a master lay dying, one of his disciples approached the moribund and whispered to him:

“I don’t want to die!” replied the master. “That’s my spiritual will. I don’t want to die!”

In the first koan, the question was posed: “Is Buddha in a dog?” By barking, the master is saying: “Penetrate the dog’s nature. To know something, you must become that thing. Perceive it from within.”

Become a loved being again. To know it, perceive it from within. This perception isn’t only mental. To know the dog, you need to submerge yourself in the dog’s nature. You truly need to become the dog.

In the second koan, the disciple simulates catching the sky and the master sees the student is making an intellectual game of the matter. The bottom line is that the disciple has no sky in his hand, rather ideals and illusions. He looks for an enlightenment that doesn’t belong to him, that doesn’t exist.

In the third koan, the master hits his disciple with his cane so the latter can lose his sense of duality in the pain. When pain dominates us, there are no more theories or mental meanderings about God or Buddha. To be entirely in pain means to be enlightened, since being enlightened means to live exactly what you’re living; to deeply penetrate yourself; to be aware of all feelings in the present moment.

When the disciple whose nose Hoshu twisted complains of pain, the master suggests, “Catch the sky.” In other words, “Catch the non-duality. Catch your being as it is, at a certain profoundness.”

For an answer, Buddha submerged the disciple’s head in water and kept it there until he was about to drown. When he was finally freed, he gasped for air.

When the disciple looked for a definition of enlightenment (or of faith), the master didn’t beat him to punish him, rather to place him within himself. Enlightenment is nothing superficial.

An intellectual went to a monastery seeking an old monk reputed for his erudition. He wanted to talk to the monk about Buddha nature, but the old man excused himself.

“How’s that possible? You’re one of the greatest Zen minds and the only thing that interests you is preparing mushrooms? Leave that chore to your students!”

“You’ve understood nothing along the way. I’m going to prepare the mushrooms myself!”

By insisting on preparing the mushrooms himself, the old monk is saying the path doesn’t consist of theories, speaking, and making projections about reality. He’s implying that the truth is like being the fish in the ocean or the bird in the sky. It’s giving ourselves entirely over to ourselves.

When in the koan entitled “The Master’s Bones” the monk who received the beatings finds out about his instructor’s death, he feels immense pain and that’s when he finally understands reality. By way of the pain, he feels alive, he feels he is. He feels who he is and understands the master beat him to direct him toward his own truth by way of pain. At that moment, he recognizes that he had a great master and grabs a shovel to go disinter his bones, i.e., reality.

What’s the master going to teach him? He’s going to teach him what he is, a pile of bones. The disciple is going to make contact with this reality and accept it. He’s also going to accept himself for who he is (“I am what I am”) and he’s going to learn.

To accept ourselves for who we are is to communicate with ourselves. It’s using our intellect for that which pertains to the intellect, no more, no less. Living the corporeal in the corporeal, the emotional in the emotional, the sexual in the sexual and the union of these four egos in the union of these four egos.

To begin, we need to see ourselves as we truly are, not tell ourselves stories. We need to find ourselves.

When are we infinite? When our intellect totally perceives itself. Our heart is infinite, love is infinite, the moment is infinite. Our body is infinite.

In this complete reality, we no longer pretend. We stop lying. We stop preventing ourselves from seeing the dark side of our sexuality. We also see all our old concepts. And as love goes through us, we become its channel; we clean our emotional plane. We make our heart infinite.

In this last koan, “The Master’s Death,” as the master is dying, a part of his being rejects death and expresses itself. He doesn’t elaborate some saying for posterity. In the immensity of his spirit, he could perceive the human scream within.

We need to recognize our impulses. We need to be honest and not bury them. These Zen fables are quite clear. We need to sink ourselves into our own reality.

In the Nansen Monastery, Enju, the gardener, was speaking with Tenza, the cook. Suddenly, a mockingbird began to sing. The two monks stopped their conversation to listen to its song. When the bird became quiet, the gardener, who had a wooden hand, tapped a finger on his wooden hand and the bird immediately began to sing again. When the mockingbird became quiet a second time, the gardener tapped his hand but the bird remained silent.

So Enju tapped his wooden hand again. Tenza smiled and the two men parted company.

Enju and Tenza live in a monastery. To become a monk signifies embracing a path. We leave our ego behind and enter the monastery with the desire to find ourselves. We no longer wish to seek the light outside, rather our internal light.

These two monks perform spiritual work on themselves, by which they analyze all that happens around them as a form of work. You can say they’re sincere, since this story takes place in a time when masters had dominion over the life and death of their disciples. Enju and Tenza sanctified their lives by becoming monks.

Who are they? Kings? Big businessmen? Artists? Madmen? We don’t know. For them, appearances no longer matter. In their path, they’ve abandoned appearances in favor of seeking their Being.

One is a cook and the other a gardener. Of course, they don’t occupy the most humble of posts. Generally speaking, the cook’s position is next in importance after the master’s in a monastery. Manual chores are not looked down upon. The truth of the matter is that when you work in a kitchen, you work the basic material of life. The truth is in the kitchen. The cook must be incredibly conscious. To better illustrate my point, let’s go back to the cook’s story.

A great master arrived unannounced at a monastery. Meanwhile, the cook prepared vegetable soup and served it to the visitor, who ate it with delight until he found a snake’s head in his spoon. He called the cook, showing him the animal’s head and asked:

The cook took the head and gulped it down, exclaiming, “That’s ‘this’!”

The gardener also plays an important part, since he works with nature, the earth, the seasons. He needs to understand the nature of the earth. Cook and gardener are two very important positions, since they’re the most humble. They know we need to eat to meditate properly.

Food is very important when you follow a spiritual path. We can’t advance by pigging out on harmful food. Personally, I don’t eat an orthodox vegetarian diet (even Christ wasn’t vegetarian); nevertheless I believe we need to considerably limit our consumption of meat, not to exceed our body’s needs.

A friend of mine who had consumed a lot of cocaine suffered liver problems. He went to China to see a great master of Taoist meditation. The master ordered him to eat pork to cure his illness. Given that meat can be a remedy, we can’t be completely against it. All in all, we can’t obtain a state of conscious being without profound reflection on what we eat, followed by making whatever reforms that reflection proves necessary.

Maybe we go to excess, but we immediately regain control of ourselves and return to a more moderate diet. There’s a mudra that illustrates this situation quite well: “The animal gets separated from the flock, but I bring him back to the flock. He gets separated again, and I bring him back again.”

Spiritual work also follows this principle. What’s essential isn’t being perfect. What’s essential is having internal dominion over ourselves in order to be able to get back on track whenever we get detoured.

I know people who, having once committed a peccadillo, they continue to commit the same offense over and over, telling themselves: “Given that I’ve already failed on one occasion, this is already ruined. I’m already rotten, so I may as well finish the fall.”

Now we can see just how noble these two monks are. They’re nobler than the great philosophers. While they’re speaking to one another, a mockingbird begins to sing. I can’t imagine Sartre or Deleuze would have stopped speaking simply because a bird began to sing. The monks, on the other hand, are sensitive enough to know to remain silent. They respect nature. They recognize its beauty and listen to its message.

If I’m capable of recognizing nature’s beauty, I’m capable of recognizing the beauty of my own nature. Otherwise, I’m inevitably closed to my own beauty. To recognize nature, we need to leave our ego behind, to stop fighting to be the center of the world.

The gardener who responds to the bird’s singing has a wooden hand. Symbolically, this detail is very significant. How did he lose his hand? You could say he sacrificed it to find himself, just as Bodhidharma’s first disciple did in China.

When Bodhidharma went to China, he sat in front of a wall and refused to speak to anybody. A Chinese warrior wanted to be his disciple, but Bodhidharma ignored him. The warrior awaited the master’s good will in vain. Days, weeks, months, and finally years passed, but Bodhidharma still wouldn’t speak to him. Suddenly, the warrior cut off an arm and, throwing it at Bodhidharma’s feet, told him: “If you don’t turn around and look at me, I’ll cut my head off.” In other words, “For me, learning is vital.”

“Become one already,” I replied. Nevertheless, if becoming an artist is absolutely vital for you, you’ll have to sacrifice some things to get there.

“I love a man. I want to build a relationship with him, but he doesn’t seem too enthusiastic. He doesn’t desire me,” commented a woman.

“If you truly love him, whether he desires you or not doesn’t matter,” I answered. “Become a champion. Excite him. Drive him crazy. Caress him with wisdom. Devote yourself to him and get to work. His lack of desire isn’t a problem at all. Don’t make a fixation of the matter. Awaken his desire as a sage would. Then your doubts will subside: He’ll love you. But for that to take place, you need to forget your own demand for love. Stop wishing to be loved. Be active. If you blow on the embers, the flames will come alive. On the other hand, if you wait for the ashes to reheat… The man you love is caught in a strange problem with his mother. You can’t catch him by the heart or by the intellect. All you have left are the body and sex. Grab him there! Initiate… In a relationship with a man, you can be his mother, his wife, his sister, his daughter, his prostitute, or his initiator. You need to stop playing the little girl who begs for daddy’s love. Forget your problems and become the initiator. Techniques exist; learn them.

Without sacrifice, nothing’s gained. Bodhidharma’s disciple gave up his arm. The gardener’s wooden hand indicates we’re talking about a man who’s sacrificed a part of himself.

The greatest sacrifice is that in which we offer up our ego, in which we bring our own gift to fruition. We profoundly penetrate the sacrifice and the ego steps aside for the quality being.

That’s what Enju and Tenza are talking about. What’s their conversation about? Two monks who have distanced themselves from the world and entered a monastery to find their awakening don’t speak like a couple of drinking buddies. They share important information about meditative techniques. They talk about spiritual work.

Suddenly they stop their conversation when reality surges. Instantly and without prejudice, the gardener uses a natural element, wood, because he knows the bird recognizes its sound. He doesn’t call the mockingbird with nonsense. He communicates with him using the bird’s own language.

The bird comprehends this natural echo from the gardener and starts singing again. The gardener hasn’t expressed himself, rather the wood, his essential nature. He truly knows how to make himself fade away and put himself in the mockingbird’s shoes. The bird feels understood and makes it known by chirping again.

When the bird stops singing the second time, the gardener taps on the wood again to indicate something to the cook.

Since the bird obeys his nature, he doesn’t cling to anything. He’s not there to join in a duet with the first gardener to come along. He’s free. If he feels the desire to sing, he sings; but he doesn’t repeat since his nature isn’t repetitive. Repetition is artificial. The mockingbird isn’t familiar with the habit. Then he leaves with all his beauty for other places to live his life as he understands it. He’s free. He truly does what he pleases. That’s what the gardener wants to imply to the cook when he asks him if he’s understood.

What’s the cook’s reply? He could have answered: “Yes, I understand it’s a basic philosophical question. The bird’s song speaks to us of the absence and the non-absence between the being and the non-being of the unique duality, etc…” He could have given any number of answers.

A warrior presents himself before a great master, wishing to be his disciple. He opens the door and before he even reaches the master at the threshold, the latter, seeing the warrior for the first time, draws a circle in the air and asks the meaning of it.

“Listen, master,” responds the future disciple, “I just arrive here and you’re drawing mysterious signs in the air for me to interpret… You’re going a little fast. I don’t understand what it means.”

The master accepts the disciple because the latter works naturally. He didn’t lie. He didn’t respond: “It’s a marvelous circle symbolizing perfection. You’re going to teach me perfection.” Given that he expressed his lack of understanding, the master felt he had the aptitude to enter in the truth. The indispensable condition for entering in the truth consists of recognizing and accepting what one doesn’t know.

That’s why the cook humbly replies that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t feel ashamed to say he knows less than the other. He speaks from his true nature.

The gardener answers him just like he answered the mockingbird. For him, the sincere word of a human being is like a bird’s song. By making the wood “sing” for the final time, he’s saying: “You are sincere. Like the bird, you speak from your original, true nature. This is wonderful, but only one time; the bird is the bird; you are yourself with your sincerity, beauty, and quality; I’m myself, the wood is the wood and the cloud is the cloud.”

The cook clearly sees that the gardener has treated him just as he treated the mockingbird. When it’s sincere, the human voice is as beautiful as a bird’s song.

In the monastery, there’s an impeccable garden. Everything there is perfect. The walkways are beyond reproach. Some dry leaves here and there add just a touch of disorder. The gardener himself shook the trees to make some leaves fall, symbolizing the disorder within the order that reminds us of the impossible perfection of the human being.

The kitchen is studied just like the garden. When the cook cleans and cuts his vegetables, all his movements are conscious; nothing is automatic. He never repeats the same gesture, since repetition is the realm of the devil.

When the two monks meet, they greet each other and by their greeting express joy in seeing one another. Their joy is intense since the master taught them: “Every day is a good day.” By not establishing a difference between good days and bad days, he implies that each day has its own intrinsic qualities and that in the entire Universe, the only moment that exists is the present, the “here and now.” There’s nothing more beautiful than the present moment, given that it’s the only one there is. It will never be repeated. This ephemeral aspect of time confers upon it an incredible quality.

If I’m conscious that every second is a good second and every day is a good day, I live in a state of grace and acceptance.

The two monks know all this when they greet each other. Suddenly, within the beauty of that day, a mockingbird sings. His song is as beautiful as a star, as the sun, the moon, the sand… It’s the music that arises during a good day, in its uniqueness. This bird will never sing like that again and the monks will never feel and speak the same way again.

In the passing of that instant, the gardener will never again tap his wooden hand like he did, the wooden hand that is carved from the wood of a tree that he himself cultivated. That’s why he’s the gardener. He works with a hand that’s the product of nature. He sacrificed something, but all sacrifice is justly returned to us by another path.

Symbolically, it’s extraordinary that the gardener has a wooden hand. Popular wisdom says those who possess gardening talent have a “green thumb.”

By tapping his hand, the gardener is playing on a natural element. The bird perceives the natural aspect of the sound; it’s a sound that’s not produced by man, rather by the Universe. It’s a note among the millions of notes in nature. The bird pays him homage by singing his song again.

Right away the gardener begins again, but the bird has already left. He’s free. He follows his impulse.

The gardener turns to his friend: “Do you understand?” He asks the question from a state of ecstasy. He has no expectations, nor does he seek to prove anything to anybody. He simply says, “Do you understand?” The cook, in the ecstasy of being himself, finds even greater joy in the ecstasy of the other. He replies, “I don’t understand, but I admire the plenitude that you are.” Intuitively he feels something is missing, although he doesn’t understand it with his intellect.

The gardener taps his wooden hand again, indicating: “You have understood, not with your intellect, rather with your joy.”

The two bid each other farewell. They find themselves in the same state of ecstasy.

A master was holding a coffee cup in his hands when a disciple asked him the following enigmatic question:

The disciple asks an intellectual question. The white stone is realization, personal purity; the display is the world, or better yet, the non-evolved world.

By letting his cup fall, the master is saying: “By not intellectualizing and by giving yourself to the world; by believing there’s a profound union between ourselves and the world. The world is everything; the world is awareness.”

Seppo told his disciple Chosei: “Come with me, and bring the ax. Instead of meditating, we’re going to cut down some trees and build a cabin.”

Chosei accompanied his master into the forest on the monastery grounds. Just as he was about to fell a tree, Seppo clarified what he had said:

“I’m already there,” replied Chosei before he’d even taken his first swing at the trunk.

“Great,” added Seppo. “Our Buddha has given a direct, heart to heart transmission; what do you think?”

The master tells the disciple: “Instead of meditating and working on our spirit inside the monastery, we’re going to do some manual labor. We’re going to build something truly useful. Nevertheless, when you cut the tree, don’t stop until you arrive at the center.”

Which means: “When you begin your spiritual work, don’t stop until you arrive at the center of yourself.”

The astute disciple immediately captures the level of his master’s suggestion. “I’m already there.” He states that he’s already arrived at his center.

The master admits the confirmation and adds: “Buddha has transmitted his teachings heart to heart. Nothing is written. Did you receive the transmission?”

“Yes, I received it,” answers the disciple as he drops the ax. And with that he clearly shows the work is complete. It’s no longer necessary to spend hours and hours meditating, studying, searching for himself, following the teachings of any and all masters who present themselves, working with energy, practicing tantric rites, doing yoga, etc. When we realize the transmission has made it directly to our hearts, that’s the end of the story.

Then the master gives him a tap. He’s saying: “You fell into the trap by believing there was a transmission. In the course of spiritual work, nobody transmits anything. We simply find ourselves in our center. Nothing is transmitted. As Gurdjieff put it, ‘nobody can pee for you.’ We’re the only ones capable of doing it. If we find it, we find it.” It’s possible to receive help, but any story about transmission of teachings will always be a story completely under the jurisdiction of the ego.

Master Tanka went to see Master Echu. At the temple door, he found Echu’s disciple, Huynen, sleeping. Master Tanka awakened him and asked:

Without even looking at the visitor, Huynen replied in a sleepy voice: “My master doesn’t want to see anybody.”

“Even if Buddha himself arrived, my master wouldn’t receive him,” added Huynen with an air of security.

When Echu left the temple, Huynen told him of the conversation he’d had with Master Tanka. Echu gave him a good beating with his cane and expelled him from the monastery.

This koan forms part of Zen history. The meeting between Tanka and Echu the disciple really did occur.

I’ll try to retell this story in my own words. The story begins with a master. To be a master means to be profoundly centered in one’s own interior.

Most people are incapable of entering deep inside themselves. It frightens them to see their internal life. Even hearing their heartbeat impresses them. To hear the heart or feel their own forces and energies are sensations that provoke apprehension. To enter deep inside oneself, it’s necessary to put aside sadness, pain, madness, death, and many other things.

A master confronts himself and by doing so confronts the divine aspect he holds buried deep within. This master admits a disciple… not to be admired or to have his position coveted, rather to help the disciple learn to be himself. No true master would ever introduce himself as such, by saying: “Come to me, I’m fantastic. You’ll be at my service all your life and for that, I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of all your worries, like money and energy. The ego is evil. Reject yours and use mine, which is much better.”

One master, Tanka, visits another master, Echu. What do two masters do when they meet? They enjoy marvelous silence together. If they wish to communicate, they do so, but regardless of what they say, their interchange is serene. They can sing, play… they meet to share a pleasant moment together.

If a master abandons his temple to meet with another master, it’s because he’s tired of his disciples. He does so to rest, to seek the company of someone who demands nothing of him, who makes no projections, who doesn’t meddle in his personal life, who leaves him in peace and tranquility. Only a master can offer a relationship of such quality. A disciple, on the other hand, has the tendency to poke holes in the bathroom wall to spy on his master.

If Master Tanka sojourns to visit Master Echu, it’s because the weather is beautiful; so beautiful, in fact, that Echu’s student falls asleep. Given such wonderful weather, the master doesn’t sleep. He leaves in search of someone at his same level of spiritual development.

For a long time, the disciple has had an important mission: to stand guard at the door. Instead of doing his job, he falls asleep. How can he fall asleep at such a time? Complacency has no place in spiritual work. You can’t get carried away by whims. A sleeping disciple is someone who remains outside themselves, who remains at the level of admiring his master.

When Tanka sees Huynen sleeping, he sizes him up. He concludes that Huynen is as sleepy in his spiritual work as he is at standing guard at the temple door. Tanka approaches and asks: “Is your master inside?” Now we understand his questioning: “Is your master inside you? Is Echu your master or do you have your own internal master?”

Christ didn’t cure the paralytic without first asking him if that were his desire. The paralytic confirmed his will to be cured and, based on that will, the miracle could be realized. In other words, Christ was asking, “Do you have an internal master? Do you have the cure within you?”

According to Zen: “If you have a cane, I’ll give it to you. If you don’t have one, I’ll take it away from you.” According to the Gospel: “To him who has it will be given and even from him who has not it will be taken away.” In other words: “Do you have the cure within you? If so, I’ll give it to you. If not, I’ll take it away from you.”

For Huynen, it’s clear that Tanka is talking about Echu, who’s inside the temple. He replies: “My master is inside, but he doesn’t want to see anybody.” “Your observation is profound,” answers Tanka.

The above means that our interior master doesn’t want to see our little personal defects: the deformations of our ego. He doesn’t want to see our little depressed personality; our persistent internal child that we’re not ready to abandon; our decadent intellect; our closed heart; our self-destructive tendencies…

“My internal master doesn’t want to see all my little imperfections” is a profound reply; on the contrary: “Even if Buddha himself arrived, my master wouldn’t receive him.” Which means that this idiot is proud of having such a master, but he’s incapable of eradicating his own pride. Buddha comes from nowhere; he’s inside us.

Regardless of our level of spiritual development, that of the other is useless to us. It only serves to show us to what point we ourselves can eventually arrive. The master shows the path, regardless of who’s there to travel it. He’s no exceptional being, owner of a rare treasure. He’s an individual who’s constantly working on himself, a normal person who simply eliminates all the filthy coal obscuring his internal diamond… a diamond that we, too, posses.

Tanka sarcastically tells the disciple: “Your master will be proud of you.” Huynen is flattered by the praise. We don’t need to study to receive the master’s approval (in that case, we’d just be seeking our parents’ approval by means of a substitute). What’s the point of getting the best grades in theater, medicine, or any other subject if, when we practice our specialty, we’re no good because we don’t love what we do? We just study to fulfill our parents’ expectations.

As a child, I did nothing but seek and buy my parents’ admiration: I only did what I didn’t want to do. What I really wanted was prohibited, since it was not in line with their expectations. Now, as an adult, I continue feeling guilty of everything I do when I’m not really being myself.

Repressing myself by playing a polite role, I end up exploding. Like that sweet, kind young boy that everybody’s suddenly talking about, the one who raped a five-year-old girl. But he was such a sweet boy! How is it possible to be so kind yet commit such a horrendous act? In reality, this boy is nothing more than an instant cocotte. People are like instant cocottes. They never eat with their elbows on the table in a restaurant. They never raise their voice, but always show extreme courtesy… until one day they commit rape, violent crime, suicide, etc. To be nice with the aim of being loved transforms us into instant cocottes. We’re not allowed to talk, hear, see, touch. Everything is prohibited!

The disciple admires his master. When the master appears, the disciple proudly tells him of his conversation with Tanka in order to get the master’s approval. Echu throws him out of the temple, his way of saying: “Stop living as a function of me! You haven’t understood a thing. I don’t need you to be who I am. If you’re my disciple, it’s to arrive at yourself.”

Master Mokugen never smiled during his entire life. He was always indifferent. He worked dedicated to his temple. He was always intensely present.

When he knew he was on the verge of death, he called his disciples and said: “Tell me what you’ve understood about Zen. I’ll give my tunic and my cup to whoever tells me the true meaning of Zen, and that person will become the new head of the monastery.”

The disciples with him began to philosophize… uselessly, since there was nothing to say about Zen. One of them approached Mokugen’s bed. He took Mokugen’s medicine cup and delicately brought it to the sick man’s lips. Sarcastically, Mokugen exclaimed, “So! That’s all you’ve learned about Zen?”

The disciple looked at his master, put the cup back in its place, and calmly looked back over at Mokugen. At that moment, Mokugen smiled for the first time in his life and added: “Bribon! Take my tunic and my cup. The monastery’s yours.”

This koan tells, using very simple means, a story of profound devotion and love. All the disciples seek an intellectual definition of enlightenment. They’re on the intellectual plane. In reality, the intellect can never supply us with the truth. That’s why none of the disciples can give an answer.

One of them, however, approaches the sick man, thinking deep down inside, “I don’t care about the tunic, or the cup, or the leadership of the monastery. Master (and in this “master” he expresses boundless love), you’ve been my father, my teacher; you’re my refuge in this life. Knowing what Zen is means nothing to me… I just want you to get better… Take your medicine and stay with us.”

He brings the medicine cup to the old man’s lips. In this gesture, Mokugen understands the immense love his disciple has for him. He tells the disciple: “So! That’s all you’ve learned about Zen?” which means: “You’ve learned to think death is a negative event. You think you’re going to lose something. You feel abandoned, that I’m abandoning you… You’re going through moods that don’t apply to an awakened spirit, because nothing’s coming and nothing’s going. The present is one. If I’m totally identified with life, I don’t leave. I’m here. I am Life.”

The disciple understands all that in his master’s look and puts the cup back in its place. By putting the cup back in its place, he’s implying: “Fine, if that’s the way things are, I understand. Don’t worry about the monastery. Die in peace! I’m here by and for the temple.”

The master replies: “Bribon! You’ve understood everything. Bravo! Here’s my tunic and my cup. We don’t need words to understand each other. Love replaces words and allows an instantaneous comprehension.”

”Die in order to not die! Dissolve your ego, your individual I. The only thing that exists is the death of the individual: The totality, Life, has no end. To be eternal, let your ego die.”

At night, especially in times of intense activity when I have difficulty falling asleep, I perform an exercise that gives me great pleasure. I tell myself: “From this moment, I no longer think.”

I relax and after a while, my thought process dissolves. Then I add: “And now what? Now I surrender myself to nothing. I am nothing.”

I surrender myself to nothing and after a while the following thought comes to mind: “I’m content. I’ve arrived at… For heaven’s sake! Stop being content! If you’re content, you’re not in nothing… fine, I’m not content.”

I work with this idea, but after a while I tell myself: “You’re not sad. Surrender yourself to the feeling. Enter in nothing. Accept it!”

A few seconds later, I’m sound asleep. It seems we fall asleep as soon as we accept nothing, since that’s when the intellect disappears. When we annihilate the intellect, we sleep: We enter the Universe.

There’s nothing more alive than a sleeping being. His intellect is completely absorbed. To enter in nothing without being asleep would be wonderful.

To get what we long for, we need to work for ourselves. If we go to see a true master to ask him to give us wisdom and truth, we will perceive that he only has his own wisdom and truth and that he’s counting on us to find our own for ourselves.

A disciple complained to his master about his wife’s spendthrift nature: “Can you help me? I don’t know what to do. My wife spends without limit and I’m going to end up ruined.”

The wise man went to visit the disciple’s wife. He raised a closed fist in front of the woman’s face and said: “Imagine that my hand were to remain in this position day and night until the end of my life, what would you say?”

Satisfied with the answer, the wise man opened his hand wide and asked: “And what would you say if it were like this day and night?”

“If you’ve understood this,” concluded the wise man, “you’ve understood how to be a good wife.”

Let’s say a closed hand is one that retains and an open hand is one that gives. Constant giving is an attitude just as monstrous as constant taking. When is a hand alive? When it moves between these two positions: giving and not giving according to the circumstances.

The way I see it, a human being should never have petrified attitudes. A petrified behavior is comparable to a deformed hand. It denotes a problem: a monstrous deformation of the being. We should take a good look and see if we always exhibit the same behavior, if we’re exactly the same all the time…

We all know people like this. In general, they tend to be very indulgent. In their opinion, the human being can’t change. They can’t imagine that people can be perfected. If there comes a time where they’re confronted with their particularities, they just shrug their shoulders and excuse themselves: “I can’t help it, that’s how I am.” And since they “respect” themselves, they make no effort to improve.

If they only have one arm, the right and, therefore, only one hand, and it’s closed (like in the story), it’s impossible for them to scratch their nose. What do they do then? Instead of opening their hand (what an effort that would be!) to make their nose feel better, they put up with the annoyance. They accept themselves as they are.

In a monastery, Isan met with his master, Gyosan, after a prolonged meditation session of a hundred days.

“I haven’t seen you these past several months. What have you been up to? asked the master.

A master is a person dedicated to helping his disciple so that the latter can work on himself. He doesn’t work on the disciple as if he were a sculpture. That would be the task of Pygmalion. He doesn’t give him life, rather constant guidance so that he can educate himself.

The master has nothing to give. His job is to guide the student’s work. If the student doesn’t do what he should, he has no master.

A man whom Gurdjieff had ordered to quit smoking managed to do so after seven years of trying. When he told Gurdjieff about it, the latter took a pipe out of his pocket and, offering it to the man, said: “Now, smoke.”

Gurdjieff advised the poet René Daumal not to have sex for an entire year. He advised another poet, Luc Dietrich, to have sex with a different woman every night.

It’s both vain and futile to doubt a master. The objective isn’t to work on the master, but on ourselves. The Advajuta Gita of Battatraya says: “Don’t expect the boat in which you’re crossing the river be beautifully painted.” Don’t worry about the master’s defects if he’s helping you cross your river.

In the present koan, we’re dealing with a disciple who’s very proud of his work. Gyosan asks him: “What have you been doing these past few months? How’s your meditation coming along?” Isan replies: “I’ve been working in the field. I’ve been working on myself. I picked a lot of millet; I produced it myself. I fed myself in spirit. I advanced.”

By the above, Isan implies that he no longer needs his master. “And you, what have you been doing?” Isan puts himself on par with his master. Before such a pretentious claim, Gyosan answers: “Just the usual. Eating a little at noon, sleeping a little at night.” “You haven’t been wasting your time either,” answers Isan, mocking Gyosan. Internally, for Isan, his master has fallen.

Instead of becoming disgusted, Gyosan makes the following observation: “If you relegate me to insignificance, likewise, you relegate yourself, since you chose me. I didn’t look for you; you came to me! You have no self-respect. Be true to your values! Knowledge and enlightenment are not open to competition. We’re not here to evaluate our respective merits or skills. What matters is your own spiritual evolution.”

When they say: “If you see Buddha on the road, kill him,” that means something else. It’s neither disrespect nor mocking. I eliminate an image carved by my own mind in order to realize the Buddha in me.

Satisfied with the interchange, Gyosan and Isan said goodbye and parted company.

“Master, life causes me grief. I’m overwhelmed by its multiplicity. Millions of things come at me. They all attract me. They’ve invaded me. I’m desperate.”

“Don’t worry. Your perception can only capture one thing at a time. It’s useless, therefore, to anticipate your own anguish. Look at each thing as it appears. When a green object presents itself, it’s unique. It’s not all objects. Accept it for what it is and live it. There aren’t millions of moments to live, just the present moment. The rest will come later; it’s found along the road of conversion to the present moment. If you remain calm, without making projections and without causing yourself undue anguish, those moments will come one after the other and your life will turn out just fine.

“Master, they say that everything comes from the One, but where does the One come from?”

The master smiled and replied: “When I lived in Osaka, I made myself a shirt that weighed a pound.”

The disciple’s question is metaphysical, and as such it has no answer. There exist things that have no reply. Certain mental facts are ambiguous. For example, the cardinal directions have no tangible reality. They vary as a function of the place from which they’re taken into consideration. In the middle of the North Pole, it’s impossible to walk northward.

The master answers: “A one-pound shirt is very heavy. To use it would be torture. Stop making up questions that are impossible to bear. Stop working uselessly with your intellect. Your question has no answer. It rests on ambiguous grounds. Worry about real things. What is the One? It’s you, it’s me. It’s my concentration in making a shirt. Enter reality! Act! Do things with complete concentration!

“Master,” said the disciple, “it’s said that he who has clarified his vision can see all. Can he see form?”

I found an old recompilation of koans of Hoshu; the above is one of them. Hoshu is a master who lived to be 120 years old.

In this koan, the disciple asks if a person who has clarified his vision and therefore sees all, can also see form. I think if we see all, we cease to see form (the container) because substance surpasses form. The master replies: “Break it into pieces.” He’s talking about form.

Here we have a monk who, intellectually, thinks there are too many forms in the world, too many things we call imperfect, superficial, too many attractions. He’s overwhelmed by the abundance.

I, one who seeks realization, tell myself: “If I could see all, would I see these types of forms, or would I see only the essential? Would I see the incessant movement of ego in the other and in myself or would I be capable of seeing our essential nucleus, our Christ, our Buddha, our internal God?”

The following questions live within this monk: “How do you arrive at the Essence? How can a being that has clarified his vision see the Unity? Can the Unity truly be seen? Can the essential be seen? Does form exist?”

We can say that the disciple has not yet resolved any of these matters, given that he asks himself all these questions. This is not the case of the master to whom he directs his questions. The master responds: “Break the world into pieces. Instead of wanting to unify it, let it be as it is! If it shows up with millions of facets, let it have its millions of facets. Don’t make an effort to live this Unity.” I gave the very same advice to a young artist who complained about not being able to center himself (he spread himself thin over a multitude of things): “Don’t make any effort!”

The monk answers Hoshu: “How do you accept the world’s diversity? How do you break it into pieces?” Hoshu replies: “If you use force, it will harm and destroy you.”

Using force harms and destroys because searching for oneself does not mean opposing the world. In meditation, we don’t oppose it, nor do we try to obtain anything. We delve into all spiritual, mental processes that exist within us. To meditate is to wrap ourselves in clouds, to wrap ourselves in the sound of water and arrive at ourselves in the midst of the diversity. To find our own essential being, the unity that we are. Our being participates in the Unity.

Hoshu’s answer means: “Don’t worry about searching for yourself. You want to find a truth at any price. Stop forcing things! Let them come! Let them pass! Enter into your own jewel! Be who you are!” Jehovah’s essential reply: “I am who I am.”

This koan deals with many situations. Among the people who come to see me, there are those who go to great lengths not to be who they are, not to accept the richness of their desires.

In general terms, the “ordinary” person is one who screens their thoughts. They’ve been forbidden to think with complete freedom. Thus, whenever they have thoughts, they select and censure some of them. They also select and censure the images that come to mind, the feelings that occur on their emotional plane, the desires that make their way into their sexuality, and the needs expressed by their body. They limit themselves mentally, emotionally, sexually, and bodily, erecting barriers that protect them against anything new and that comes to them in a constant manner. They steal the barriers that have been inserted in them.

This koan advises us to stop forcing ourselves and accept everything that appears within us: the dirty as well as the sublime.

We bathe ourselves in the state of the “ordinary” person for fear of picking up all that is too low or too high within us. We limit ourselves to what is permitted and we reject the rest, thinking it doesn’t apply to us. Nevertheless, it belongs to us entirely and it’s what constitutes our richness.

An “ordinary” person is one who never changes during their entire lifetime. Not changing is their main characteristic… unless they have an accident. The accident is their gift from God, their great adventure. It seeks them out. The fire in their house, the death of a relative, sickness… these are all events that pepper their monotony. They have no other horizon.

The disciple confided to his master: “I’m overwhelmed. I constantly oscillate between two states: drowning or floating. When will I be free of this world of suffering? When will I be free?”

The master didn’t answer. After a few minutes, the surprised disciple spoke again: “Master! Perhaps I’m not sitting here in front of you asking you a question?”

For the master, there’s no doubt that we are realized here and now, in the present. Realization is here.

If the disciple enters the present with the master, he becomes realized. Given that he believes himself to be floating or drowning, he doesn’t live the moment. In the end, he creates illusions. He’s neither floating nor drowning. He’s a diamond next to another diamond, a Buddha next to another Buddha, a perfection next to another perfection.

The difference between the two men is that the master has realized his perfection; the monk hasn’t. He seeks it and believes he’s either drowning or floating. He’s created great anguish for himself by not entering into the present.

That’s why the master doesn’t respond. If his disciple confides that he’s floating or drowning, that means he’s not there in the moment. In the moment there’s nothing that allows him to float or drown. There’s no ocean, no water, no anguish. There is peace.

The master doesn’t answer his absent disciple. The latter insists: “Master! I’m talking to you!” The master asks: “If you’re talking to me, where are you?”

As for us, where are we? In the present? Distressed? Where’s the problem? We’re alive, fed, clothed. Where is the problem?

We need to let things come without affecting us. And they will come. We’ll be in the midst of them, but we’ll be completely centered in the present. We won’t drown in the midst of the clouds or in the sound of water. We’ll be there!

“What does it mean to be one with the path?” In other words, “How can you be the path, wisdom, and yourself simultaneously?” He who asks this question is an intellectual who hasn’t lived at all. He’s like a public speaker that gives talks on orgasms while he himself is impotent.

This means: “Break your intellect! Work. Throw yourself into existence! Be yourself. Live life.”

The disciple adds: “If we’re not one, what are we? He hasn’t understood a thing. His question machine got carried away and kept him from giving himself the essential reply.

Hoshu answers: “You should be able to understand that, given what I’ve told you. Instead of asking me more questions when I advise you to stop your intellect, stop it and be conscious of how you feel.”

There’s a therapists’ secret that says when a person comes to the session with all their problems, we sit them down in front of us, we look at them and ask: “How do you feel?” Generally speaking, they talk about their problems and remain in an anecdotal plane. At that moment, we recenter them by repeating the question: “How do you feel? Look inside yourself and see how you feel!” If they insist on the anecdotes, we center them again. And we do this as many times as necessary until they can finally look deeply inside themselves and feel what state they’re in.

When they get there, we go to the next stage. We ask them: “What do you desire?” We help them look inside themselves and discover what they truly long for.

To summarize, during the entire session, we give them our undivided attention and guide them so they can discover how they feel in the deepest reaches of themselves and what it is they truly desire. That’s all.

Why did Hoshu reply “mu”? He didn’t give him any response at all. We don’t know if a dog does or doesn’t have Buddha nature.

This koan is one of the most famous. It’s considered to be the entry point into Zen Buddhism. He who solves it is enlightened.

The monk’s question is not essential. To have or not have (Buddha nature) isn’t really important.

Hoshu answers his disciple: “Stop your mental meanderings! Mu.” Which means: “Make the void. Concentrate on yourself and stop your mind!”

*Mu means “nothing” in Japanese.

In this koan, Hoshu, who had been one of Nansen’s disciples, goes to see a master who’s full of knowledge, full of teachings to transmit. As for Hoshu, he has no knowledge. He’s himself.

When the master sees Hoshu, he says: “Here comes Nansen’s arrow, Nansen’s student. This guru is sending his student here to challenge me.”

“Look at the arrow!” is a marvelous reply. It means: “Don’t look at Nansen’s arrow; look at who I am! Get out of your head, out of your preconceived ideas, out of your knowledge, out of your value judgments. Don’t look for Nansen in me! Stop thinking of knowledge in terms of competition. If somebody comes to you, don’t judge them. See them for who they are. Look at the essence of your visitor!”

By replying, “Look at the arrow!” you could say Hoshu takes the arrow and sinks it into the master’s heart. The master defends himself, saying: “You missed,” which means: “The arrow didn’t reach it’s target.” And Hoshu answers: “I nailed it!”

Hoshu is at such a grade of purity that he doesn’t enter into the other’s competitive game. He tells him: “Look at the arrow. Look at me!”

“I nailed it, because I don’t want to enter in you. I have no interest in becoming your master, nor do I want you to applaud me. I didn’t come here to challenge you nor to teach you a lesson. I’m me and you’re you. If we vibrate in unison, good for us. I don’t want to influence you, since I believe that when we respect the other’s realization, we don’t look to influence them.”

Hozu was a hermit. He lived in the mountains where he sought enlightenment. Birds would leave flowers at his feet. Later, he began to work with Doshin, a true master. He became enlightened and from that moment on, no bird ever approached him again to leave flowers at his feet.

“Before Hozu worked with Doshin, birds would leave flowers at his feet. Why did they stop? asked the disciple.

“To be attached to the pleasures of the world. Not to be attached to the pleasures of the world,” replied Hozu.

“When the disciple makes the effort to become enlightened, birds offer him flowers. Why, master? And why did they stop when he became enlightened?”

Hozu doesn’t reply: “To be or not to be attached to the material pleasures of the world.” He uses two sentences: “To be attached. Not to be attached.”

When this man began to seek enlightenment, he was still attached to the world. He made such an effort in his search that his life became full of marvels. He did everything he could to find something, only without knowing what he sought. This effort attracted birds that left him flowers at his feet.

Likewise, many gurus attract girls covered with floral necklaces to their feet, and receive thousands of displays of veneration. When they achieve true realization, they no longer need all the histrionics. They lose interest in applause and reverence. They become invisible.

A true master is invisible. For him, there’s no need for costumes or flattering. Reality is what it is. When we parade ourselves like saints, we forge illusions of and for ourselves. The temptation to prophesy, to want to be a master, to want to teach others, is huge. The temptation is incredible.

If I say the monk walked on the bridge, he’s walking above it; but if I say he doesn’t walk on the bridge, he’s not walking above it. The same holds true for the water that runs below the bridge. When I say it runs, it runs, and when I say it doesn’t run, it doesn’t run. I should not combine one sentence with the other. The situations are entirely different. When someone makes two statements, I shouldn’t combine them to come to a conclusion.

Who says I need to come to one? Our thinking; that’s what wants to obtain some sort of result here when none is necessary.

“Hold on! There’s no need to explain. My teaching is subtle and difficult to understand.”

Hoshu implies the following: “Stop asking! Stop thinking! Stop! If you really want to go directly to the center, you don’t need orientation or explanation.”

“My teaching is subtle.” It’s about a teaching that rests neither on words nor on concepts.

“It’s difficult to understand.” You can’t understand anything with the head. Be yourself! To go directly to the center is to go directly to yourself. Stop trying to learn by the scholar’s way. To learn a bungle of useless concepts is one thing and to have an internal reply is quite another.

There’s a poem that says: “A grain of sand in the blue sky at noon and the sky is dirty.” If a perfect, enlightened person possessed the slightest dark desire, it’s because his being is not yet perfect, unless he recognized his desire and purified it.

“In the clearest of terms, what is a little dirtiness?” The disciple asking the question has no idea of the response. He’s never known the incommensurate joy of seeing himself as a living being. He asks: “What does it mean to live without the slightest dirtiness?” Hoshu answers: “It’s falling into the well.”

By this reply, Hoshu means: “Your intellect betrays you. Instead of realizing the questions you ask, instead of opening up like a flower, you look for conceptual answers. That’s how you’ve fallen down in the well, you’ve fallen into the darkness of dry intellect.”

“You’ve pushed all your humanity into the well of the intellectual question. You want answers to problems even though you already have them.”

Somebody once consulted with me to find out if they should or shouldn’t have a child. It seemed a bit too much that they should consult with me about the matter. It’s up to the person themselves to find the answer, to resolve the intellectual problem: “Should I do it? Should I not do it?” She needs to enter into herself and not into the well of advice, to deeply penetrate into her own longing!

Tangen was master Echu’s butler. One night, Echu called him. Tangen got out of bed, went to Echu’s room and through the door asked him: “Here I am, master. What would you like?” He received no answer; only silence emerged from Echu’s room. Thinking he had been mistaken, Tangen went back to bed.

After a brief moment, just as he was sinking into a deep sleep, Tangen heard his master’s cry again: “Hey, butler!”

Once again he went to Echu’s room and said through the door: “Yes, master. What can I do for you?”

Just like the first time, his question remained unanswered. He insisted a little, but in vain. Perplexed, he returned to his room. As soon as he lay down, he heard:

“Master, you’ve called me three times, here I am,” said the butler again through the door.

“Come in!” ordered Echu who, seated in his bed, watched him enter and commented: “You’ve been studying with me for a long time already and you’ve never reached enlightenment. I was ashamed. I was sure it was because I was a bad master. Now I know it’s not my fault. I thought perhaps I should apologize to you, but you’re the one who needs to apologize to me.”

When they tell us a story like this one, we’re often left agape. We wonder: “All that rigamarole just to tell us that? What’s it mean?”

In this story, there’s a master, a meditation master, a healing master, all in all, a master. I, his disciple, chose him. If I chose him, I need to grant him my trust. It’s up to him to find the method, to me to follow it.

Now I’m his butler. I help him. I’m with him all day long. At night, I sleep in the room beside his. In the middle of the night he calls me. I get up wondering what’s up with him? What can I do for him?

I offer him my services. He doesn’t answer. After a brief moment, I go back to my room, but a little later he calls me again. I rush to his bedroom door… silence; he says nothing. I return to my room and he calls me a third time. I answer his call a third time, but this time he calls me inside and chides me. He confirms he felt bad because of me, that he thought himself responsible for the fact that I haven’t become enlightened, and for that reason he had considered himself to be a poor master. Now, he realizes I’m the one who should apologize to him, not the other way around. I don’t get it, not at all.

The first time I read this story, I wondered about its meaning and pitied the poor disciple. Whenever his master called him, he went immediately; why was the old man criticizing him?

“Hey, butler! Remember who you are! Remember!” When I’m tired and distracted, I remember myself.

I chose a master who would awaken me, to make me reach a more elevated spiritual level and now I make projections onto him. I slide my father’s image over his and I attack it.

“Hey, butler! Stop the game. Here we are, here and now. There’s nothing more beautiful than spiritual work. To arrive at one’s own maximum. Remember who you are!”

“Hey, butler! You’re participating in a lesson. You’re not here to seduce the participants. Stop the game. You’ve come here to awaken, to find yourself.”

When Tangen hears Echu’s call, he imagines the latter needs him. Echu, however, doesn’t need a thing. He simply wants to give Tangen an example. He says: “Lead yourself, enter into yourself, awaken yourself!”

Tangen doesn’t understand the message. He offers his services. Echu tells himself: “This guy’s hard of hearing.” He doesn’t reply, inferring: “I don’t need you. That’s not why I called you. I called you to remind you to do your internal work.”

Tangen retires to bed thinking he was called for nothing, that Echu didn’t need him. What does Tangen want? He wants the master to take him into consideration. He projects his father onto Echu. The master is converted into the ideal father figure to whom Tangen goes when he’s called.

Tangen errs in his thinking. An apprenticeship is not about finding an ideal father figure whose shadow we pretend to look for. An apprenticeship is about finding ourselves. A master helps his disciples find themselves.

That’s why, when Tangen begins to fall asleep, Echu tells him: “Hey, butler, enter into yourself!” Echu calls him three times in a row, hoping he’ll finally understand. He thinks: “I’m telling Tangen to listen to himself, to penetrate deeply inside himself, to do his work. As long as he doesn’t serve himself instead of serving me, he’ll never find himself.”

The third time, the butler still hasn’t understood and says: “Master, you’ve called me three times.”

“I haven’t called you three times. I’ve told you to find yourself three times. I thought I didn’t know how to guide you, but now I see it hasn’t been my fault. You’ve got your ears blocked. You rely too much on your superficial personality. When I call you three times without giving any reason, you fall into a crisis. Enter into yourself! Understand yourself! Furthermore, apologize!”

Gurdjieff called this “the calling of oneself.” To remember ourselves. Not to enter into relationships that don’t apply to us, that have nothing to do with our nature, that are the mere fruit of our projections fed by our past.

The disciple is entirely within his intellect. He asks: “What is permanent?” The master replies: “The permanent is the impermanent.” Everything changes and, therefore, the only thing that remains permanent is change.

The response is beautiful, but the disciple adds: “Why is the permanent not permanent? Why is change continuous?”

His question remains intellectual in nature. The master replies: “Life! Life!”

“What is it that has neither beginning nor end?” It’s life, and it turns out that life is indefinable. We’ll find nothing if we seek to understand it by beginning with words.

“Avalokiteshvara,* the bodhisattva of compassion, has a thousand hands, and in each of them there’s an eye. Which is the true eye?”

Without giving him time to think, Rinzai quickly rebounded the question back at his disciple:

“The bodhisattva of compassion has a thousand hands with an eye in each. Which is the true eye? Answer quickly, without delay!”

Muyoku pulled Rinzai out of his chair and sat down in it. Standing, Rinzai asked Muyoku: “Why?”

Then, Rinzai let out a great roar that welled up from deep within him, provoking the disciple to abandon his spot. He sat back down. Muyoku said goodbye and left.

Let’s take a look at this koan. A master is seated. Seated well, full of calm. A monk arrives and asks him: “The bodhisattva of compassion has a thousand hands with an eye in each one. Which is the true eye?”

Instead of replying, the master quickly fires the question back at the disciple.

Let’s say I’m Rinzai, seated there, calmly, content, doubtless. I don’t call myself into question. I am who I am.

“Are you asking me? If you have your doubts, it’s because you don’t love him.

Rinazai doesn’t doubt. He’s in union with the world. Muyoku, on the other hand, appears with a thousand thoughts in his head: “And Buddhism… this… that… the compassionate Buddha. What is compassion? He has a thousand hands and an eye in each one… they’re all false… but he must have at least one or two that are true… where are they?”

He comes with his head full. Inside, his head crackles like a poorly tuned radio. The master, hearing this mental crackling, takes the question and returns it to his disciple.

By repeating Muyoku’s question, Rinzai removes it from his mouth. Just like you’d change a baby by cleaning his excrement, the master cleans his disciple’s mind. He pulls out the question as though he were removing a tumor.

He adds: “Answer quickly, without delay!” In other words: “When I remove the question from you, I remove your intellect. Now reply.”

Rinzai has actually performed a psychic operation. The disciple doesn’t understand. His crackling hasn’t stopped. For a response, he takes the master’s place. “Since you won’t answer me and, moreover, you steal my question, I’m going to steal your spot!”

Rinzai asks him: “Why? It has nothing to do with trading places. In that case, you’d be entering into a competition that has nothing to do with reality. Why do you want my spot? Take yours, that which pertains to you. When you take mine, you’re not yourself. What game are you playing?”

He quickly emits a great roar and recovers his spot. That’s like saying: “Each of us has our spot, that which pertains to us, where we can be ourselves.”

Muyoku says goodbye to Rinzai and thanks him. He’s understood. The doubt has been removed. He understands that all of us, together, are the compassionate Buddha. This Buddha has a thousand hands… ours, and a thousand eyes… our consciousness. Which is the true one? Yours or mine? They’re all true. As long as we live our true nature, no eye is false. From that moment on, compassion appears. All of us together form a thousand-handed Buddha with an eye in each hand. We can coexist without competition and work together.

What is compassion? To ask intellectual questions like the disciple? To believe there’s only one truth, despite the fact that each and every one of us is true at every moment? Are we going to interpret reality as if we were the only ones who can hold the truth? Christ can confirm: “I am the truth. I am the way.” We can’t say as much. Each of us is a hand, one of the eyes of the whole body that makes up universal compassion.

“Answer quickly!” means: “Tear from your spirit all these questions that separate you from the world. Be one with me!”

Muyoku replies by taking Rinzai’s spot. Rinzai says: “Why do you think you can realize yourself by competition? When you take my spot, is your consciousness truer than mine? We’re both in consciousness, completely, here and now. Wherever you may be, consciousness will be there, and wherever I may be, there will it be as well. It’s in each and every one of us.”

Next, he lets out a scream. Life expresses itself. Muyoku says goodbye and leaves. He thanks the master; he’s understood the lesson.

To ask such a cretin question of a master indicates that the bonzo has his doubts. Only a disciple could ask such a question. A master instantly knows if the person he’s dealing with is or isn’t within their heart. He sees it. When a person arrives at a certain level of consciousness, he sees this level in everybody.

According to legend, when Buddha became enlightened, he immediately said: “I just now realized that everybody carries the Buddha within them. It exists in everyone.” Those were his first words.

We see our own level of consciousness in each person. Everybody possesses it. On the other hand, everybody possesses all existing levels of consciousness. You could say each human being is a perfection of the Universe that simply doesn’t know itself. Consciousness doesn’t add anything to a being, except the possibility of seeing itself at its own level. The more conscious we are, the more we see. A master knows perfectly well whether we’re in our heart or not.

The disciple asks him: “Are you in your heart?” The master replies: “No, I’m in my heart.” With this response, he’s implying: “I’m not in the heart that you imagine, in the heart you see. What heart are you talking about? You can only speak of the level you know: yours. What does “your heart” mean to you? I’m not in the heart you speak of; rather, I’m in my own.”

Thus the master immediately erases the disciple’s projection. He doesn’t seek to exist within the desires or the expectations of the other. He’s not in this world to fulfill anybody’s expectations.

The master tells the disciple: “I’m not in this world to fulfill your expectations. I’m in my heart.”

One day, Master Ummon told his students: “If you don’t see a man for three days then you see him again, you can’t be sure that it’s the same man. And what happens with you?”

This koan deals with continuous change. At the end of three days, we’re different. We’ll never be identical to the way we were.

When the master says: “Ten thousand,” he’s implying: “I accept the ten thousand facets of my internal diamond. Each human being inside me is but one of the multiple facets of this diamond. A personality petrified by repetition doesn’t allow renovation. Novelty appears when I see myself just as I am in full consciousness. I accept constant change. I don’t hang on to limited models of myself. I can change.”

Gauguin would never have become Gauguin if he hadn’t followed this principle. He worked in a bank for the better part of his life until one day he decided he really was an artist. That day, he left the bank and became a great painter.

“Is anything greater than Buddha, greater than the patriarch?” asked an alumno of his master, Ummon.

I love this reply because it’s full of reality. It means that the pleasure of what’s real is always greater than any intellectual pleasure. This disciple, like all the others, is trapped inside an intellectual voyage.

This is a classic reply. It means I need to be within who I am. We’re locked within multiple psychological shells and the key needed to open them is: “What do I feel?” or, “How do I feel deep down inside?” It’s a very simple key.

“Intellectually, without words, how do I feel, here and now, in my intellect? Emotionally, how do I feel, here and now, on my emotional plane? How do I feel as a living being?”

One day, while walking through the marketplace, Banzan the monk overheard a customer asking a butcher for his best cut of beef. The butcher replied: “In my shop, every piece of meat is the best. Take a look around; you won’t find a single cut that isn’t.” The butcher’s reply enlightened Banzan.

Let’s say Buddha symbolizes my internal perfection. As a result, my wisdom, which is part of that perfection, can’t be outside myself. Regardless of where I may be, it’s inside me. When a being loves, inside and outside no longer exist. Everything is the center. Everything is united. My hand isn’t outside my body.

Manjusri replies: “Why should I go inside, if I don’t feel like I’m outside? The temple door is an illusory barrier. It’s symbolic. I’m always with you. For me, there’s neither inside nor outside.”

“Oh, Buenos Aires, I’ve traveled the world, but never separated from you,” said the poet Jorge Luis Borges. Conversely, Saint Thomas signaled: “A friendship that ends never truly was.”

In this second koan, Banzan becomes enlightened by understanding that nothing is better than anything else. All of our different parts, our sexuality, our emotional plane, our intellect, our material center, constitute the best of ourselves. Nothing in us can be qualified as less good.

To become enlightened, a human being recognizes that everything within him is the best that exists.

Like the Universe, we possess a dark part and a bright part. The dark part, nevertheless, is our worse side. As Gurdjieff would say: “A cane always has two ends.” Similarly, the two sides of a coin are inseparable.

Our dark root is full of an infinite array of stuff, such as incest, archetypal slips, homosexual nuclei, jealousy, desire for possession, cannibalism, sadomasochism, etc. From the moment we recognize this root and begin to work on it, it advances, evolves, and produces a diamond. It produces the best of ourselves: our consciousness.

Consciousness has nothing to do with “consciousness of something,” rather with our light. If we accept it, we live at our best level.

Our society teaches us to limit ourselves to a relatively mediocre phase of ourselves. It drives us to live in nothing, the nothing that resides within us. I know people who are embarrassed to harbor elevated feelings.

It’s good to know that, at all levels of society, beauty is prohibited. Sure, it’s beautiful to shine in the industrial, cultural, educational or other similar plane, but this beauty is beauty outside the temple. It’s given tremendous importance, so much that we feel ashamed to confirm our central beauty: that vast beauty that represents our best.

Some of our thoughts are truly marvelous. There’s never a need to imitate someone else’s beauty when we should be satisfied with our own. That’s what I told a young artist who showed me his sketchbook: “What’s the point of performing these technical duties if you’re not yourself? You can’t be found in any of your drawings. It’s obvious you’re trying to satisfy others, not yourself. Look for the beauty of your own being. Draw what you love! Be yourself! Don’t lose yourself making a great effort to show technical skill, where you risk not being yourself.”

We don’t dare or we can’t express our best thoughts. My optimism has made more than one person react. They tell me:

“I understand your reticence, but I’d like to remind you that I, too, am a part of the world. If the world were totally imperfect, it would be perfect. We’d all be dark beings and nobody would complain about nor suffer from it. It’s the little pieces of perfection, the little lights of consciousness that permit us to see the imperfection. We need to develop them. They, too, belong to the world. And that’s the reason why we need to cultivate the beautiful thoughts that appear in us.

We’re better off not being like one of Dostoyevsky’s feminine characters who lets herself completely sink after making a mistake. That’s the same as confirming: “I’m worthless, because my thoughts are ugly.” We can say, on the other hand: “I probably have some ugly thoughts, but I also have wonderful dreams. Sometimes, incredible longings or extraordinary thoughts cross my spirit. I don’t allow myself to express them because in my childhood they were prohibited of me, but there’s no doubt whatsoever of the existence of these thoughts and yearnings.”

And just as beautiful thoughts exist, there also exist feelings that I wouldn’t call superior. It would be an error of definition. They’re normal feelings. The others, the mediocre feelings, are abnormal.

Our heart is full of extraordinary feelings. They’re neither closed nor bad. We need to assume our elevated feelings, even though we sometimes have to deal with our jealousy, our desire for possession, our lack of self-trust, etc.

We don’t need to define ourselves by our dark side, rather by our bright side, the jewel that shines within us. If a piece of coal contains a diamond, the value of the object isn’t based on the coal, rather on the diamond. If we had a similar object, we’d hold onto it like something precious, endeavoring to work on it and remove the coal.

I think the emotional plane is comparable to a piece of coal containing a diamond. It’s like that because we need to take care of it and respect it. In no way can we scorn it like some plain coal, rather we must give it the value of the diamond it contains.

We harbor superior thoughts, feelings, and desires, but we also harbor and know dark desires. Who hasn’t thought of sleeping with the boss’s wife? Who hasn’t coveted someone else’s girlfriend or boyfriend? Who hasn’t experienced perturbing thoughts in their dreams? Where’s the person who’s never had an erotic dream? Who hasn’t slept with their own mother or father in their dreams? Who hasn’t killed in their dreams? We all carry all of that within us. In these swamps of desire there nevertheless exists an aspiration of light that makes us arrive at our natural desire, that which is comparable to a diamond.

When we’ve identified it, we’ll tell ourselves: “I want to follow this precise desire, not all the others that accompany it.” I met a married woman who wanted to be true to her husband. She told me: “I control my desires in draconian fashion because if I didn’t, I’d be a nymphomaniac. All men make me tremble.”

We need to find our primordial desire, and not get carried away by just any desire. That way, we’ll create within ourselves a path that leads to our desires of light.

The same holds true for our acts. It’s better not to do just anything, given that every action is precious. Even the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly. Scientists sustain that the fluttering of wings of a butterfly in Japan can produce a hurricane in the United States.

Even the slightest action has repercussions. We advance, for example, along a path and, suddenly, we’re detoured a millimeter from our route. In time, that detour distances us further and further from our initial route, provoking huge changes. By this luck, we carry out fundamental changes simply because on one occasion, in the course of an instant, we made a luminous choice or a dark choice.

In the second koan, Banzan becomes enlightened because he realizes he doesn’t have one part better than another within himself.

Intellectual, emotional, sexual-creative, and material center, each of our parts possesses its significance, just like each part of the cow has its importance. We can’t say that one part of a cow is better than another, unless our criteria for appreciation are limited to the resistance of our teeth. The cow is neither tough nor tender, neither bland nor juicy. Only our cannibalistic aspect can so express itself. The cow, in and of itself, only possesses good parts. None of them is bad.

The smallest part of our body has its importance, just as the smallest part of our being has its significance.

“Do you see that mountain?” replied Ganto, “go grab it and bring it to me; then I’ll give you a reply.”

The disciple is anguished by his desires, his mind, what happens, the world, etc. In fact, he’s trying to escape all that. He asks the master what he should do and the master replies: “Sit down!” That means: “Stop! Meditate!”

The disciple expresses his lack of understanding and Ganto adds: “Bring me the mountain.”

It’s impossible to move a mountain. What Ganto’s implying is: “You’re asking the impossible. Your mind will always be there, as will your emotions and desires. The world will always be there. If you try to stop it, the only thing you’ll end up doing is becoming a wreck, because you’re looking for the impossible. Nature is like that. The only thing you can do is to enter within yourself, your own true nature. Let the manifestations of the three worlds come and go as they must. Attend those events. Just like you attend a storm, attend your anger. Remain there. Be present and do nothing. Stop reacting to everything that happens!”

One day, Kakou told his master, Tokusan: “I suppose all the old masters who have died went somewhere. Tell me, master, where did they all go?”

“I expected the answer of a galloping horse and I get that of a tortoise,” observed Kakou with frustration.

He disdainfully left the room. Tokusan watched him go, helplessly shrugged his shoulders, and raised his eyes to heaven.

The next morning, after taking his bath, Kakou offered Tokusan a cup of tea. The latter asked the former:

“Master, your Zen is much better today,” answered Kakou, smiling and satisfied.

Once again, Tokusan shrugged his shoulders and helplessly raised his eyes to heaven.

It’s important that the disciple not question his master, because then he’d be playing the role of the latter. The master reveals according to what’s expected of him. The more trust the student has in him, the more he’ll learn from him.

This notion of a master reminds me of a saying of Buddha’s: “Every event is an occasion.” Everything that happens gives us the opportunity to transform ourselves, to develop ourselves, to grow. It’s up to us to take advantage or not of the opportunity. Every instant becomes a master, as long as we recognize it as such and decide to learn from it.

The fact that Kakou calls Tokusan into question indicates from the beginning that the disciple in this koan is a poor disciple.

Someone once told me: “A true master always longs for his student to surpass him.” This is an arguable point. It’s enough to think that a true master doesn’t enter into games of comparison. Moreover, he can’t be surpassed because his realization belongs to him alone. The disciple will find his own realization.

A true master fervently desires that his disciple reach his own realization without competing for it. He’s an instructor. A false master, on the contrary, hopes his disciple will entrust him with his life and wealth.

Kakou wants to know what ever became of the old masters who have died. He’s thinking of reincarnation and other similar things. The truth is, he’s afraid of dying. This fear makes him think of reincarnation. He’d like to be calm. He’d like to hear: “After you die, you’ll go to the pantheon of masters. There, you’ll find them and, like little cherubim, you’ll all have hours and hours of joy. Later on, you’ll be reincarnated. You’ll be better off in each reincarnation. At last, you’ll be good. Then you’ll be free of this world and you’ll have access to nirvana forever. You’ll be in divinity and you’ll bathe in the marvels of a uniquely spiritual world. You’ll be light as a feather. You’ll have neither body nor sex. You’ll be very happy.”

That’s what Kakou would like to hear. But for a reply, Tokusan offers him nothing. It’s not his problem. What difference does it make to him what has become of the other masters? He’s a master, and he’s alive. What more could a disciple want? He could answer: “You have them right here in front of you.”

Tokusan doesn’t try to calm his student’s worries. He limits himself to saying that he has ignored what’s become of the old masters. When asked what comes after death, a master would reply: “How should I know? I haven’t died yet.”

This master lives in the present. When his hour comes, he’ll worry about it; meanwhile, what’s the point of filling his mind with useless questions? While he’s alive, he’ll live. When he eats, he’ll eat. When he’s dying, he’ll be dying. When he dies, he’ll die.

Kakou doesn’t appreciate Tokusan’s reply, and he lets him know as much: “I imagined you’d give me an incredible reply, a sort of metaphysical aspirin, something that would give me tranquility, but instead, you tell me you don’t know. That’s the last straw! You’re a useless old man!”

The next day, Kakou is still there. He’s uncomfortable because he insulted Tokusan. Nevertheless, he brings him his tea, as usual. If he had truly thought his master were useless because he didn’t know the answer to his question, he’d have left immediately.

From the moment where we realize that a person doesn’t fit our expectations of them at all, we have no choice but to sever the relationship with that person. For instance, we’d write them a letter to the following effect:

We’ve worked together, but I can’t go on any longer because the smell of your thoughts and feelings seems like that of garlic sausage. And since I’m a vegetarian, I’ve decided to look for a beautiful leek instead of staying on with the sausage.

There are times when we need to know how to break with the cause of our obstacles. Are we going to cut ourselves off from the old family past that we’re dragging around like a ball and chain? Or are we going to keep asking for a bit of recognition and tenderness of the family that has humiliated, angered, denied us?

We always maintain the hope of being seen and recognized one day. When are we going to cut all that off? When are we going to put a stop to our petition, our demand for recognition? When are we going to stop participating in relationship games where we lose ourselves?

The disciple hasn’t cut off his discipleship. He leaves furious and the next day he comes back with the master’s cup of tea as though nothing had happened. Deep down inside, he must feel upset and, serving the tea, he has to be on the lookout for the slightest sign that might betray the master’s mood. How will Tokusan react?

The master drinks his tea, just like he does every morning, and in an excellent mood, he asks Kakou if he’s solved the koan he had posed the previous day.

He’s just fine. Being insulted the day before doesn’t bother him at all. His disciple’s mood swings don’t affect him. When Kakou reproached him for not responding to his question, Tokusan helplessly shrugged his shoulders and thought: “Well then, I didn’t answer. You insult me… fine, that’s the way things are. Why should that bother me?”

Kakou, noticing that Tokusan isn’t angry, rather that he’s actually in a great mood, calms down. He expresses his relief by saying: “Your Zen is behaving much better today.”

Since his master has received him favorably, Kakou recovers his best feelings. He goes back to loving Tokusan. The latter, witness to his disciple’s mood swings with respect to him, and shrugs his shoulders again as a sign of indifference. What he means is the following: “Listen, my friend, I don’t care about your anger or your flattery. I am who I am. Your mood swings will not change my internal truth. This truth is what I realize of the Buddha in me. I don’t live in hopes of knowing your opinion about my way of life. Your thoughts don’t humble me or elevate me, because I’m me and in no way do I depend on what you think or believe. Today I feel fine. This tea is excellent.”

We make so many projections! We always want the other to be a star like our father or our mother. We get our hopes up. But after our illusion comes tumbling down, given that the object of our projection isn’t what we expected, we feel cheated, betrayed, and even hopeless. All that is so because we’re the ones who venerate the idol, and we’re the ones who knock it down. In this fashion, we go through life knocking down idols that we had praised to the skies.

What’s interesting about this koan is how it underlines how important it is to live and work according to the inclination of our own heart, instead of making an effort to respond to the expectations of the other.

Te-Chan, Chouei-Ien’s best disciple, went to see his master one day and said: “Master, I’ve learned a lot from you, but now it seems I need to travel around China to perfect my knowledge of Buddhism.”

With Chouei-Ien’s blessing, Te-Chan abandoned the monastery. He traveled far and wide over China for several years, then one day he went back to Chouei-Ien.

“So, you’ve traveled all over China,” commented the master upon receiving Te-Chan.

Te-Chan concentrated and after a moment of reflection declared: “When the clouds stop in the peak of a mountain, moonlight can’t penetrate the waters of the lake.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the master, “your hair is grey, you’ve lost several teeth and you’re hunched over. You’ve aged a lot, but is that all you’ve been able to learn about Zen? What a disappointment.”
Te-Chan began to cry. Then he asked of Chouei-Ien: “Master, give me your summary of Zen.”

“Fine, here’s my summary: When the clouds stop in the peak of a mountain, moonlight can’t penetrate the waters of the lake.”

Transfigured by the reply, the disciple exclaimed: “Thank you, master! I’m enlightened!”

To which the latter would reply: “Solitude is not knowing how to be with yourself.”

Two monks meditated, each in his cabin. The master went to visit them. He opened the door to the first cabin and asked the disciple how he was doing. The latter replied raising a lighted lantern to his face. Then the master gave him a smack with his hand and the monk lavished him with excuses.

Right away the master went to see the second disciple and asked him the same question and received the same reply. Delighted, the master congratulated him.

At first, I couldn’t understand why the master had two different reactions to the same attitude. It seemed illogical to me.

Let’s go back to the first koan. When we decide to work with a master and deposit all our trust in him, we can’t abandon him until the moment we ourselves become masters. If we abandon him before, we haven’t realized our work. In this case, we’ll go from one master to another without venturing more than a “kilomaster.” We’ll go from question to question receiving nothing but answers.

When we ask a question, we get nothing more than a verbal reply. But what good is that type of reply? What good is it to be told things?

While Te-Chan is together with his master, the truth is within his reach. Nevertheless, he decides to leave. He travels a great distance in search of the truth, and then returns to the same master thinking that master knows a lot. He believes this because the master can say everything, explain everything.

When Chouei-Ien asks his summary of Zen, Te-Chan expresses a profound, even grave, truth: The mountain (my true self), I am the mountain (I meditate). But then the clouds come, symbolizing the shells that burden me: intellectual, emotional, and sexual shells. The clouds form a sort of roof of false thoughts, false feelings, and false desires that imprison me in my ego and separate me from Knowledge.

The moon. Upon reaching enlightenment, a monk said: “Oh, shining, shining, shining moon!” He found joy. Life is joy.

Jung recommended “raising up any dream by free association until arriving at the secret thoughts that torment the individual.” These secret thoughts that torment us are the clouds. When we perceive them, when we perceive our suffering, we fall in the ecstasy that resides within us. To be alive is to live in ecstasy. That’s what Te-Chan is saying.

When the moon, meaning existential joy, crosses the thoughts that torment me, when it crosses my unconscious, when it crosses the lake waters (my life), I become a “shining, shining, shining moon.” There’s no difference between the moon and me. I’m outside of time and space. I’m in reality itself.

That’s what Te-Chan tells his master about Zen. But the latter doesn’t allow himself to be fooled by that resonse. He says: “You’ve said what Zen is. That’s what you think. Perhaps you even give lessons to others, but you yourself haven’t realized it yet.”

When the master immediately defines Zen in the exact same words as the disciple, it’s the moon that’s talking. The master expresses an experience that he knows and has lived for a long time.

A truth expressed by someone who has realized it isn’t the same truth when expressed by someone who has nothing more than intellectual knowledge of it.

When we haven’t yet realized something, we talk of it. When we realize it, we don’t talk of it, we live it.

Later, we can talk of it using the same symbols as others (the mountain, the clouds, the moon). The difference resides in the fact that we’ve become deeply present in our definition, which becomes a truth, because it has been lived.

“Master, when faced with disaster, what do you do to avoid it?” asked a disciple of Hoshu.

“Like this,” relied Hoshu, smiling after opening his arms wide and breathing deeply.

When we find ourselves in the midst of a situation that seems catastrophic, we need to realize that what’s happening to us isn’t terrible. Like Hoshu, we can say it’s “like this.” Every thing that happens to us is a sort of wonder. We’re in the midst of “it” and it’s “like this.” We shouldn’t call it “disaster.” We should call it “life and its contradictions, crises, and multiple facets.”

In the midst of what we call disaster, we’re within that “like this.” Someone gets into a dispute with me, it’s “like this.” My companion has a crisis, it’s “like this.”

In that frame of mind, we don’t avoid life and its hard blows; on the contrary; we put ourselves in the midst of the catastrophe. We face the event saying it’s “like this” and we live it. At that moment, disaster ceases to exist. We’re left with life and everything that comes with it, the evitable and the inevitable, all mixed together.

When Hoshu says, “like this,” he accepts the event and, pleased, doesn’t offer intellectual advice. He shows he’s there present. He also shows that if we must talk of disaster, there’s only one to speak of: the disciple and his intellectual questions.

When people complain about their situation, I often feel tempted to tell them: “It’s like this.” But they’re too entangled in their suffering or their problem to accept it. They don’t understand that you can tell them: “Listen, what’s happening to you is not catastrophic. Stop trying to avoid it, live it!”

“My father just got remarried. His new wife is giving him a surprise birthday party, but she hasn’t invited me or my brothers. That can’t be possible. I’ve talked to them about whether we should go or not. Can you believe it? She’s keeping us from going to our own father’s birthday party!”

“Your father has a new wife. It’s “like this.” She invites you; it’s “like this.” She doesn’t invite you; it’s “like this.” Why do you compare this to a disaster? Why do you look at it negatively?

“If your son wants to call you, he’ll call. It’s “like this.” If he doesn’t want to call you, he won’t call. It’s “like this.”

It’s difficult to talk to people about not clinging because they’re usually very attached and can’t free themselves.

A mystic happens to be someone who knows how to free himself from his attachments. Like the ship that comes into port moors, but then to leave port, it breaks the ties that attached it to the pier.

“Which is the road to Mount T’ai?”* asked a monk from Chao-Cheyou’s monastery of an elderly woman.

As soon as the man had taken a few steps, the woman added: “It’s so stupid to go like that!”**

The monk told the story to Chao-Cheyou, who told him: “Listen. I’m going to test this elderly woman for you.”

The next day, he went to look for her and asked the same question. The elderly woman gave him the same reply. Back at the monastery, Chao-Cheyou commented to the monks: “I’ve tested the elderly woman from Mount T’ai for you.”

Although it’s not explicitly stated, it turns out the elderly woman is a nun. In those days, enlightened nuns put monks to the test.

She offers the same reply to the master as she did the monk: go straight ahead. As soon as he takes a few steps, she adds: “It’s so stupid to go like that!”

The koan stops at this point; it doesn’t appear logical, but it does appear useless, totally useless. What good is such a story? What interest can it have for our lives? The commentaries that accompany it are also incomprehensible.

*Mount T’ai is a mountain with a temple where teachings of great quality were given.

** According to a different version, the nun said: “You’re just a vulgar monk like all the rest!”

The elderly woman knew how to prepare for battle, but she never saw the spy that was following her. Old Chao-Cheyou made his way into enemy camp, threatened the fort, but didn’t earn the title of a great man. After all, I find both of them lacking. Please tell me, why did Chao-Cheyou put the elderly woman to the test?

What would a master who runs an ashram think of the fact that one of his students asked a seemingly enlightened nun the way to a temple of self-development? I’d say he’s a perfect idiot and reflect: “What’s this boy doing with me if he needs to ask the way of an elderly woman?”

We need to be true to the teachings we pick up, wherever we may learn them, above all because there exists no teaching to be received. The teaching consists of the revelation of our own qualities, of showing us who we are.

That’s why we don’t need to learn here and there. We should put our trust in someone and, given that we accept them as master, that has to be for life… as long as they don’t deceive us.

Chao-Cheyou is a master. So what’s this monk think he’s doing asking an elderly woman questions and looking for a mountain with a mythic temple to make contact with the sacred? Why doesn’t he seek the sacred within himself, since we all have it inside us?

Gurdjieff said that God, seeing man to be so destructive, decided to hide the truth in the very heart of man, in order to protect it. It has been safely stowed there, since man doesn’t concern himself with his heart.

This is a beautiful story, and not in a negative sense. I believe each of us is the monastery, the temple.

First, why go ask an elderly nun the way to Mount T’ai? Second, why return humiliated to tell of the defeat? The monk returned humiliated to cry at the skirts of his master. In a whining tone, he says:

“Master, that nun tormented me! I humbly asked her the way to the temple. She said: ‘Straight ahead.’ I believed her and began to walk straight ahead because I wanted to get to the temple. But then, master, she put herself on a different level and mocked me, because I had walked straight ahead.

“I didn’t ask her how to get to my internal god, to my consciousness! I didn’t ask her anything related to myself. I wanted to get to the temple! She made fun of me because she told me to go straight ahead; she was saying that to arrive at enlightenment we need to go straight ahead toward ourselves. To shoot the arrow at our own heart.

“So she laughed at me. She’s an odd nun. On the one hand, I admire her, since she taught me a lesson. To seek the spirit, we need to go straight ahead toward ourselves, but without climbing a mountain.”

If you asked me: “How can I become enlightened?” I’ll tell you: “Meditate! Go toward yourself! Enter inside your own treasure!” If you thanked me and advanced straight ahead toward Mount T’ai, I’d think you were a cretin to come by and ask me.

Meditate! There’s no other way to find yourself. No other way exists. Still, there are people who can help you.

This deals with a woman. Buddhists are extremely misogynistic. They maintain if a woman reincarnates as a man, only then can she become enlightened. They also warn that for a woman to meditate in lotus position, she needs to put one of her heels in front of her sex so that a serpent doesn’t penetrate it. I truly wonder what image they have of a woman’s sex!

Here, then, is an enlightened nun who humiliates a monk. The latter returns to the monastery humiliated.

It’s as if I were a karate student in a Hong Kong movie. I advance along the way to the dojo. I find an elderly woman and ask her: “Where’s the dojo where they teach martial arts?” As a reply, the woman gives me a punch in the nose. I return with my nose bleeding to the master’s house and I tell him: “Master, she broke my nose! What good is your teaching if I can’t figure out what the elderly woman said to me? I don’t understand! What good is your teaching?”

How does the master reply? Full of himself, he answers: “I’m going to test her! We’ll see about what’s good!” Self-assured, he goes to meet the elderly woman and, overflowing with complacency, he asks:

He leaves in the indicated direction and the elderly woman adds: “Old fool!” In a victory march, he returns to the monastery and proudly proclaims to his disciples: “My friends, I’ve tested the elderly woman!” What can we think of that? Perhaps we can read it as a caricature, but I’m not so sure. A master cannot be like that.

The first thing that occurs to us is that the master goes to see the elderly woman as a lesson for his students, not to give her a lesson, nor to defeat her. A student is a student and a master is a master.

So then, the master approaches the elderly woman. He approaches her as a master but, according to the tradition and to my way of thinking as well, he’s dressed as a monk, not as a master. The idea is to present himself before her as a student, that is, invisible, showing nothing of himself.

He comes to the elderly woman, a visible master because she’s seated there to annoy monks and put them to the test. He arrives as a monk and thus says to her: “Where’s the road to Mount T’ai?” He doesn’t ask on his own behalf, since he already knows the way. He asks nothing of a spiritual nature. He simply asks a practical question: “Which way to such and such a place?”

She doesn’t recognize him. She treats him as a student, replying: “Straight ahead.” The elderly woman works in a mechanical mode. She gives him the exact same advice.

There was a master who enlightened people by giving them thumbs up. A disciple did the same and the master asked him: “Show me what you do to enlighten people!”

“I do the same thing you do, master, the same gesture,” responded the student while giving the master a thumbs up. The master cut off his thumb with a quick thrust and, at that very moment, the disciple understood.

I don’t know what he understood, but the fact remains that he understood. Now, instead of giving the thumbs up, he raises his index finger.

Chao-Cheyou arrives, then, before the elderly woman, but she doesn’t recognize the master in him. She treats him as a student and says: “Straight ahead.” He goes straight ahead and she, full of disgust, adds: “You’re just like all the rest!” The master keeps on walking. He has tested the elderly woman.

But what has he proved? He has shown that this woman doesn’t know a master when she sees one. When she puts the monks to the test, she uses a mere mechanism. She doesn’t distinguish one monk from another. She sees the form, not the level. It’s not necessary to give a spiritual lesson to everybody. Some people simply need to know that the road goes in a certain direction. Not everything is symbolic.

The master didn’t tell the elderly woman. As a result, she could continue fooling, acting with pomp, doing her theatrics. He doesn’t care in the least. He’s concerned with his students.

Since they know their master, they see the woman’s error and should wonder: “How is it possible that this woman dare say the same thing to us? She must be blind or deaf. She doesn’t understand a thing!”

This is a story marked by misogyny. Now let’s look at the other side of the issue.

She knows how to ask very precise questions. Based on: “Where are you going?” and “Straight ahead,” she has a good battle plan.

That is, the elderly woman doesn’t realize that the master isn’t coming as a victim (since her battle plan is offensive in nature), rather simply to see her as she is. The woman can plot a good battle strategy, but in no way can she be at the height of the newly arrived.

After all, I find both of them lacking. Please tell me, why did Chao-Cheyou put the elderly woman to the test?

Why should he need to submit her to the test, to show his students something, or to prove the limited worth of the elderly woman? Why should he need to demonstrate this to himself and the others? What need has he to arm himself for battle, to resort to the role of spy, and to be in competition, in combat? Why should he need to do all that? There’s no need whatsoever! All that just shows his bad will toward nuns, nothing more. He enters into battle with a being who is not at his level. He puts her to the test. What’s the point? There is none! He shows his defect, that’s all. On the spiritual path, we don’t need to show our importance.

The master doesn’t need to measure up to anybody, nor show that someone else doesn’t know something. Even though the other can be humbled, we don’t need to humble them to vindicate ourselves. There’s no need whatsoever to do so. Why? One light lights up the whole city. Zen says: “When a flower opens, it’s springtime the whole world over.” When you realize a truly positive act, all of civilization trembles. Those are the powerful and true acts that have changed the world in their time. Negative acts haven’t changed the world. They’ve destroyed it.

When a being begins to truly think as he should, he plays like a fine-tuned harpsichord. There’s no need to demonstrate what we are. The master doesn’t need to demonstrate it either; he only needs to be what he is, and that’s sufficient.

Based on the above, we can now understand the poem, which becomes crystal clear.

The question was the same. But who asked the question? The question itself doesn’t matter, rather who asked it. When an idiot says: “What is it that doesn’t begin and doesn’t end?” it’s a stupid question. But when a person who has arrived at the height of spiritual development says: “What is it that doesn’t begin and doesn’t end?” it’s an entirely different question altogether. The question changes as a function of the spiritual level of the person who asks it.

The answer was the same. If we respond in the same way to the same question it’s because we’re not perceptive. Let’s take a look at another version of the story of the master who goes to visit the monks meditating in their respective cabins.

He opened the door of the first, who raised a lamp to the master’s face. The master gave him a slap with his hand. He opened the door of the second cell, and the monk raised a lamp to the master’s face and the latter said: “Very good.”

Both monks did exactly the same thing, but the master saw the difference. The same reply given by different people is different. Words pronounced by people on different levels are different.

The elderly woman responds similarly. What can we think of someone who can’t see the difference in the spiritual level in the different people they speak with? They’re like a judo practitioner who can’t tell the difference between a white and black belt. His life would be in danger. It’s necessary to know how to differentiate. Different grades exist in the spiritual domain as well.

People think that by virtue of the mere fact that they exist and think, they unlawfully hold the truth and they’re the standard of measure for all things. This is simply false. There are levels. There’s work to be done, and some people have done their work while others have not. Over the years, the latter pay. Yes, they pay.

When there’s sand in the rice. There’s sand in the elderly woman’s rice. She has her defects, so she functions mechanically. Her enlightenment is not perfect.

There are thorns in the mud. The master has thorns; there are aggressions within him.

When we measure ourselves by a person who has sand in their rice, we do so because we have thorns in the mud we walk on. If the master didn’t have thorns, he wouldn’t have gone to test the elderly woman. He’d do his work calmly from within his internal peace. There’s nothing to prove. There’s nothing to earn. Spiritual work is work we do on ourselves from within a profound peace. There’s nothing to teach.

We can guide, but not teach. There’s nothing to transmit. There are so many trifling things blocking the lamp’s transmission… we don’t need to transmit anything! The lamp is already transmitted.

You want me to give you my lamp: you’re a fool. You want me to blow on yours: I can’t. Blow on your own lamp. When you do, I will have transmitted it to you. (I’m speaking in the name of Chou-Cheyou, not for myself. I’m not a master!).

So I tell you to blow on your own lamp. You do, and your flame begins to shine. And that’s how I transmit the lamp to you.

What lamp have I transmitted to you? “To he who has, it will be given, and from he who has not, even will it be taken away.” Remember this line from the Gospel? Or the Zen line: “If you have a cane, I’ll give you a cane. If you don’t have one, I’ll take it away from you.”

It’s always the same. If you have, I’ll give to you, I’ll transmit the lamp to you; but if you don’t do your work, I’ll take it away from you. In other words, I won’t give you anything. I don’t care. I’m not going to get mixed up in your sandy rice.

That’s how the transmission of the lamp works. It’s important not to fool ourselves. There’s nothing to place in your hand; no treasure to give you; no directions to give you, such as “the mountain is that way, straight ahead.”

For me, to go straight ahead means to follow a sinuous path, like the labyrinth of the Cathedral of Chartres, because I’m complex. Why should I follow a straight line like everybody else? I have the right to advance as I choose, as long as I advance, feel good, and do my evolutionary work.

If we interpret this koan psychologically, we could ask ourselves what’s wrong with the nun. She’s bad because the monk is, too. They’re Mom and Dad. The nun torments the kids because she doesn’t know how to see the man in her husband, in her master. She sees a child. She denies his masculinity. For her, he’s not an adult at all. She gives the lessons. She considers herself to be the great universal mother who gives lessons all the time.

Many women who have never had a father fall into this madness. The same thing happens to many men who haven’t had a father. The women, like the nun, fall into the situation because, since they haven’t had a father, they haven’t introjected their masculine half. By virtue of the fact that they haven’t had a relationship with him, they’re incapable of recognizing a masculine master. Nevertheless, they themselves are this master, since we all have a masculine and a feminine side inside us. We’re men and women, yin and yang.

So now the nun feels the need to lower all men to the level of children. In this manner, the man will never exist. For this type of woman, there will only be universal mothers… the great goddess surrounded by all her little children.

The inverse also holds true for men who haven’t recognized their mothers. They become great fathers surrounded by children.

The nun’s lack of knowledge puts the sand in the rice and the master’s lack of knowledge puts the thorns in the mud. If each of them recognized their level, they wouldn’t pester the monk, they wouldn’t pester the children.

If parents mutually recognized each other, they’d let their children grow in peace. And even if they didn’t live together, they’d arrange things so the children wouldn’t have to suffer, obligated to participate in battles, in Vietnam Wars that only concern adults… or supposed adults who are nothing but children.

How can we use this koan? The mutual non-recognition of these two beings provokes a lack of enlightenment. There comes, however, a time when it’s necessary to recognize oneself.

After studying this koan, I’ve asked myself what is a master. What does it feel like to be a master?

Let’s say the master (not referring to Chao-Cheyou, who has committed a gross error) is recognized. He understands he shouldn’t fight with his mother any longer and that he shouldn’t fight with his father. We need to stop fighting with the maternal and paternal archetypes inside us. That means we need to simply accept humanity.

Once we’ve accepted the father and mother as universal principles… despite all we’ve suffered (most of us have suffered a childhood that didn’t even depend on our parents, but on society, the specific historical epoch, and everything else), we end up getting rid of this shell, of this super me, by absorbing it. At the moment we absorb it, we stop competing and undermining ourselves. We have a sort of learned sense of shame that consists of not accepting a single one of our values.

A master is a person who humbly accepts his own values. Who’s to decide what’s a value and what’s not? He himself.

He asks himself: “How do I feel? Who am I?” Before all, he replies: “I am who I am.” Just like in the Bible. It turns out really great to be able to say: “I am who I am.”

From that moment on, the histrionics have ended. In my intellect, I am who I am with the power that I can have. In the emotional, I am who I am. In the sexual… in all my being, “I am who I am.”

Is that enough? No. You can add: “I was who I was. I’ll be who I’ll be. I am who I was and I am who I’ll be.”

And there you have a master. He unconditionally accepts his past, his present, and his future. At this very moment, he’s the sum of everything he ever was in infinite past lives and everything he’ll ever be in infinite future lives, until he arrives at the sensation of being universality itself, a being who feels universal.

A human being enters into similar states of feeling universality. At the same time, he can feel miserable.

The master feels miserable. He feels that life passes by in the blink of an eye. Why worry about whether we’ll die tomorrow or in hundred years, since we’re all going to die anyway? It’s useless to worry, since life will always be short… the blink of an eye.

Given that the master can’t change his lifespan, he deals with the intense passing moment. He can even lengthen his life a little bit by opening himself to the intensity of his vital moment.

He opens himself to the intensity of what’s mental. Not what’s mental in a crazy sense, rather of the mind that can be opened. He opens himself to the intensity of what’s emotional, the intensity of creativity (sexual or artistic) and the intensity of the material on which he lives. It’s intense, very intense. He bears difficulties and he ages, but it’s intense. He lives, then, inside the intensity of the universal force.

The friend returned to Arakuine and found him dying of laughter. “What’s this? Before you were crying and now your laughing. Why?” he asked.

If I want to cry, I cry. Why contain myself? The sky is blue, it overcomes the storm, the rain comes; but later the rain goes. They ask me: “Why are you crying?” I reply: “Ask the master! Your master. Ask yourself! Enter inside yourself and see yourself crying. When you cry, cry! When you eat, eat! When you get angry, get angry! Don’t repress your anger. Let it out. Ask yourself! Be a clear blue sky. When you want to cry, cry, and then when you want to laugh, laugh. The storm has passed and the birds are singing. You let it come and you let it pass with immense pleasure.”

What a pleasure it is to get angry! It’s energy. How wonderful! And to fall into depression? How wonderful! In reality, we know we’re not that. And pain? Sickness? How wonderful! We’re none of those… not at all! We’re the blue sky and we don’t identify with those states. Enough! Suddenly, we let the light enter inside our heads. Inside the light, there are shadows and other things; but in any event, it’s light. No effort! No mental striving! Nothing! Calm! No image to project!

A master says to his disciple: "No one has ever reached enlightenment." The student immediately became enlightened.

Nobody has ever reached enlightenment, simply because we are all enlightened. We don't reach enlightenment. We are enlightened. We work and we work to arrive at enlightenment but we don't arrive at it, since we are enlightened. That's what enlightenment consists of. All human beings are enlightened. The whole world is perfect.

A monk spent the day with an old master. At nightfall, he was preparing to leave when he noticed it was very dark outside.

The master took a lighted candle from its spot, but just as he was handing it to the monk, he blew it out. At that moment, the student became enlightened.

By blowing out the candle, the master is saying: “You are the candle. You’re the light. Don’t come asking me for light. We’re all in the dark. Darkness is light. We’re all enlightened. Reality is the same for everybody.”

“What is the sound made by a tree that falls in the forest if nobody hears it?” someone asked me.

It would seem nonsensical to say “baroum!” if nobody heard it. But the question has nothing to do with a tree, rather with us. It means: “Realize the phenomenon within yourself! Don’t listen to other people’s stories. Don’t let other people do for you what you yourself need to do. Listen to yourself. Who cares if others listen to you or not? Realize the phenomenon within yourself! Accept yourself. Accept the fact, once and for all, that you don’t need your dad to blow out the candle and tell you: “Walk in the darkness. Find yourself!”

In keeping with custom, a disciple presents himself before a great Zen master bearing an offering. The master receives the offering and, as a show of appreciation, gives the disciple five blows with his cane. Surprised and bruised, the disciple asks the master: “But why do you beat me?”

Without uttering a word, the master gives the disciple another five blows and expels him. Ashamed, the disciple leaves without understanding a thing. He goes to see his own master, tells him what happened, and asks him why the great master beat him. Without uttering a word, his master gives him another five blows with his cane.

The disciple ends up with fifteen bumps on his head, and we’re left wondering why those Japanese are always going around beating each other with their canes… they’re so predictable!

I associate this koan with the one about the two monks meditating in their cabins who raise a lamp to their faces when the master goes to see them. Each of them received him in the same fashion, but he reprimanded the first and congratulated the second.

The disciple arrives bearing an offering. According to the story, he presents the offering in mechanical fashion. The master redirects him toward himself by way of pain. He puts the disciple in conflict. He deals him five blows.

The disciple doesn’t understand, so he asks: “Why?” The master deals him another five blows, meaning: “Stop going in circles around yourself. Enter inside yourself!”

The disciple seeks explanations, so the master appoints himself to the task of beating him, of mixing it up with him. Nevertheless, the master doesn’t complicate matters unnecessarily; the matter doesn’t concern him. By beating the disciple again and expelling him, he’s expressing: “Leave! You can’t understand a thing!”

The disciple then returns to his own master, who shows him: “You demand to have everything explained to you… enter inside yourself!”

The first monk raises a lamp before the master, but inside him nothing happens. He’s earned five blows. The second does the exact same thing, a symbolic gesture, but the symbol is heartfelt.

It’s all quite simple. Either we perform acts entering deeply within ourselves, or we don’t and remain on the surface. Only someone who profoundly observes us from without will know if we have or haven’t freed what we need to free.