A. Student: “It’s hidden in the sofa.”
Commentary:
Even the sun looks hidden to the blind while clearly revealing itself to the sharp-sighted.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Tag: happiness
Q183. Student: “How can I take the boat that crosses the sea of birth and death?”
A. Master: “Get aboard.”
Commentary:
If you get aboard, you will sink.
If not, you won’t cross the river.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q180. Student: “What is the true-self?”
A. Master: “An old well.”
Student: “What is it like?”
Master: “Its bottom is invisible.”
Commentary:
It is too deep to see the bottom of it.
It will quench your thirst forever if you drink it.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q178. Isn’t Zen meditation against Christianity? Do I have to cease being Christian in order to practice Zen meditation?
A. I never ask people to change their religions or cease keeping their religions, but encourage them to be better adherents of their religions than before. I tell people to realise what the object of their faith is, whether God or Buddha in order that they may be better followers of their religions.
Saying that you believe in Buddha or God without knowing what or who they are, is affronting them, not paying homage to them. Let’s suppose there is a person who always says that he loves you. He doesn’t know you, and never tries to find out where you are and what you are like. However, he always wants you to help him. Does his love for you make sense? That is blind faith and idol worship. There is an old saying, ‘Seeing is believing’. Only when you can see them can you have true faith in God or Buddha and be a genuine believer in your religion.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q176. How can we control our thoughts?
A. A foolish man tries to control his thoughts while a wise man tries to control his mind. If you want to control your thoughts as you please, you should conquer your mind, that is, realise your mind. Trying to control each of your thoughts is like trying to win the battle by fighting individually each of the thousands of enemy soldiers in the battle field. There is no hope for success in this way. The most efficient and best way to win the battle is to capture the General who directs all the enemy soldiers. To realise your mind which is the root of all your thoughts is to capture the General.
What makes it difficult to capture the General is that we can’t recognise him easily because he is hidden disguised as one of the enemy soldiers. You should capture a soldier and interrogate him deliberately to find out who orders him. If he dies, get another captive and examine him more deliberately. Be determined to continue this to the end. Before long, the General will appear and say, “Why are you wasting your effort while I am always with you?”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q171. Student: “What are you like when your body is not you?”
A. Master: “It’s like a mountain.”
Commentary:
Oh! Mountain!
It’s also like a rat.
If I were asked the question, I would say, “A mountain runs like a rat.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q167. What changes can we experience as a result of Zen practice and how should we deal with them?
A. Once in a while, you can have new experiences or changes in your life. For example, your life feels even more simple than usual. You start to see what you couldn’t see; perceiving every single gesture or movement of people or things as a movement of the truth, or feeling oneness with things and people around you. Also, you start to hear what you couldn’t hear; hearing all sounds as Dharma talks and as the sound of the truth. However, these are not all but just a few of many examples, and not all people have the same experiences.
When these changes happen, some people are so attracted by them that they expect the same things to happen to them again, or even believe it to be the final goal and therefore cease to practice. Also, there are people who are so bewildered or scared that they hesitate to keep practising. You should neither be attached to these experiences nor be scared of them, but leave them alone, since all of them are not only signs indicating that you are making progress, but also illusions created by your mind. Trying to experience the same again, or struggling to avoid them is making other illusions.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q160. If everything, even enlightenment is empty and just an illusion, why should we try to attain enlightenment?
A. If we really know that everything is an illusion, we don’t have to make an effort to attain enlightenment since enlightenment is also then an illusion. The reason for trying to obtain enlightenment is that we have not realised in person the truth while saying that everything is empty. The knowledge of enlightenment is not enlightenment itself. The former is as different from the latter as the knowledge of a meal is different from eating the meal. The knowledge of enlightenment can no more give us eternal happiness than the knowledge of food can satisfy our hunger. We practise in order to experience, in person, the truth that everything is empty.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q159. How can I clap with one hand?
A. You already did.
Commentary:
The banker informs him that he is a billionaire, but he is still worried about his next meal.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q157. How can we have less suffering when an unhappy thing happens to us?
A. Why do we have less fear than children when we get an injection in the hospital? Do we have less pain than children? When do we feel more pain, getting an injection while awake or while asleep? We feel much less suffering while awake because we can know the context before and after the injection: why we have to get it, what will happen after we get it, and what the feeling will be like, and we can get ourselves mentally ready to take it in advance.
However, being injected while asleep will make me feel more pain because we are not ready. Likewise, children feel more pain or suffering than grown-ups because they can’t understand the context including the fact that the injection will relieve them of the suffering they are undergoing now. In the same way, when we can see the essence of things we are going through by seeing things as they are, we can feel much less suffering than those who can’t see things as they are.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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