A. Master: “It feels full after eating hearty food.
Student: “I feel that, too.”
Master: “That’s it.”
Student: “I still don’t know.”
Master: “Not knowing is not wrong.”
Commentary:
Don’t go to beg your neighbours for embers for cooking with a lamp in your hand.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. It means ‘no discrimination’. However, what matters is not whether we pick and choose but how to pick and choose. You should not mistake it for making no discrimination and having no thought at all, which means death.
Picking and choosing is an essential part of your life. How is it possible to maintain your life with ‘no picking and choosing’? When shopping for instance, you have to pick and choose what to buy and when to go shopping before leaving the house. During your shopping, you also make a lot of discrimination about prices and brands. Your life can be said to be an endless series of ‘picking and choosing’. The enlightened also make ‘picking and choosing’ in their life.
The difference between your ‘picking and choosing’ and the enlightened’s is that the enlightened know that all their ‘picking and choosing’s are empty and illusions while you don’t. When you realise the truth that everything is empty, you come to know that both the objects of your ‘picking and choosing’ and the action of your ‘picking and choosing’ are empty. Then, your ‘picking and choosing’ is not ‘picking and choosing’ any more. Then you can be said to do without doing, or enjoy a life without ‘picking and choosing’ or discrimination.
There is a similar phrase about ‘chopping wood and carrying water before enlightenment and chopping wood and carrying water after enlightenment’. Both the ‘chopping wood and carrying water’s look and sound the same, but the latter is quite different from the former because the latter is not ‘chopping wood and carrying water’ any more. In fact, they are actually so subtle and different from each other that only the enlightened can be conscious of the difference.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. The reason why we can’t know what happens to our true-self when our bodies die, is that we can’t see the situation now, I think.
Let me ask you a question, ‘2 + 3 = ( )’. What is the suitable number for the blank? I am sure you know that the correct answer is ‘5’ because it is such a simple question. How can you work out the right answer when there is nothing visible, not even a number in the blank?
You know the right answer since you can clearly understand the visible thing, ‘2 + 3’. If you don’t understand even one of the three visible things, ‘2’, ‘+’, and ‘3’, you can’t know the appropriate number for the blank. Likewise, if you can see everything as really it is, clearly knowing all things that you see and hear, then you can perfectly perceive invisible things as clearly as if you saw them now, in the same way that you would know the right number for the blank, as clearly as if you saw the number ‘(5)’ written there.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “Behold the puppets prancing on the stage, and see the man behind who pulls the strings.”
Student: “Who is the man?”
Master: “He is pulling the strings now.”
Commentary:
Seeing leaves fluttering, we can be aware of the existence of wind.
Seeing a feather flying in the air, we can be conscious of the existence of a bird.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Don’t be impatient. If you are practising correctly, practice itself is important. Never think you are trying to reach somewhere away from you.
Whether going fast or slow, don’t have any intention to reach a goal somewhere else other than yourself. Try to realise that each step you take is itself the final goal.
Student: “What is the true-self?”
Master: “Take a look at beneath your feet.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “A word”
Student: “Where is it?”
Master: “In your mouth”
Commentary:
It cooks, and chats.
It brings peace, and causes troubles.
It makes the light and the darkness.
It does all these things.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. No master says that he has attained enlightenment because it is also an illusion. Masters are those who have realised the truth that everything is empty as an illusion and there is nothing to gain or lose. When everything including the master himself is empty, who would attain what? It is, for example, like, after struggling a lot to reach the Earth, finding the truth that they are originally part of the Earth and there is no other place to reach than where they are. So after enlightenment, they would say that all the efforts they had made were of no use at all. In order to describe such people, we use the phrase ‘attained enlightenment’ for the sake of convenience. If a master happens to think that he has obtained anything, he is not enlightened.
Master: “Why did you come here?”
Student: “I came here to attain enlightenment.”
Master: “I don’t have such a thing here.”
Student: “Why do many people try to attain enlightenment?”
Master: “Because they have not confirmed the truth that there is nothing to gain or lose.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. It is not that God doesn’t listen to you, but that you are deaf to him because you are involved in listening to only your familiar noises. It is not that he hides himself from you, but that you are blind to him since you are preoccupied in keeping company only with familiar figures. He sometimes whispers and sometimes shouts. He sometimes shakes you, from time to time pushes you and once in a while pulls you. It is not God but you that are to blame for not receiving help from him. If you can cut off all images and names, his voice and figure will sound and look clear to you.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. Master: “A room”
Commentary:
To take you out of a room is not difficult.
However, it is very difficult to take the room out of you.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
A. It’s a very common feeling that you can experience during practice. Whatever scenes and whatever emotions, good or bad, neither avoid nor follow them. They are all illusions. Just try to trace them back to the root from which they come. The purpose of Zen meditation is to realise what the root of all illusions is. It is because you are making a little progress that you have such feelings. From now on, do think of them as a gate to the final goal, your true-self, and your practice will make big progress.
Student: “Sir, I feel fear during my practice.”
Master: “That is an action of your true-self.”
Student: “You said that fear is an illusion.”
Master: “It is when you don’t know that fear is an action of your true-self that it is an illusion.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Zen Fools 