What is your take?

THE STUDENT Doko came to a Zen master, and said: "I am seeking the truth. In what state of mind should I train myself, so as to find it?"

Said the master, "There is no mind, so you cannot put it in any state. There is no truth, so you cannot train yourself for it."

"If there is no mind to train, and no truth to find, why do you have these monks gather before you every day to study Zen and train themselves for this study?"

"But I haven't an inch of room here," said the master, so how could the monks gather? I have no tongue, so how could I call them together or teach them?"

"Oh, how can you lie like this?" asked Doko.

"But if I have no tongue to talk, how can I lie?" asked the master.

Then Doko said sadly, "I cannot follow or understand you."

"I cannot understand myself," said the master.

Comments

[Bern]

Sounds like a Cat Stevens Song.

One can not seek truth. It can only be surrendered to.

Universal Truth is beyond Mind and can not be contained because the Source has no Container.

Words and images are representations of vibrational energy. Source is within them but you can not see the source. It can only be dove into from the center. So it is always Here, but it can not be pointed to in this reality. It is embedded in reality.

The mind is created when one seperates from what is.

In "What Is" there is no truth because it "just Is" without labels.

Since the teacher is a Master, then he doesn't see separation and does not acknowledge rooms since they are divisions.

He has no tongue or doesn't teach because he has no adjenda. He only speaks in terms of collective Unification and Oneness. This is the Truth He Lives.

He can not understand "myself" because it is an egoic state of seperation which a Zen Master would not partake in.

[Liara Covert]

Be nothing. Do nothing. Sense nothing. Think nothing.

[Lara Jane]

Perhaps the master is eluding to the fact that his "true self", the spirit / soul which is his essence, is of an state not of this world, meaning "he" - his "true self" is not subject to worldly conditions such as the mind, physical surroundings, bodily processes etc....

Sometimes I wonder why religious / philosophical scriptures have to be so mysterious and cryptic! ;)

[Liara Covert]

Lara Jane, as a person comes to sense no right or wrong answer exists, then frustration and confusion fall away. How you think or whether you detach from thinking and emotion, affects overall perception of what is.

One view is that soul is hard to grasp because the mind and body exist within it. To remember how it feels to be out of mind and out of body triggers revelations.