Q. Why do you tell us to ask your question of anything such as a tree, a spoon, a bird and so on?
A. To practise means to try to break illusions so that we may see things as they are. The reason why I encourage you to ask anything you encounter in your life is that everything we hear and see is a gate to the final goal, the true Self. In fact, everything is the final goal itself rather than a gate to the final goal. It is not that an illusion is quite different and separate from the truth, but that an illusion is no other than the truth.
There is nothing but is the truth, and the thing we think of as an illusion is also the truth. In other words, when we see a flower, for example, ‘flower’ is only a name given to it as a sign of agreement used for communication and not the essence of it. When we identify the thing with the name and confine it to its name, we can’t see its essence. Then we call the name an illusion. The name here applies not only to nouns but also all words regardless of whether verb, adjective or adverb even though I present only one example of a noun here. So, when I tell you to ask anything you see or hear in your life, I mean that you should try to see or hear beyond all your fixed ideas, that is, break the illusions of things.
©Boo Ahm
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