pw

A disciple once asked his Zen master, "Master, what is the meaning of spiritual practice? And what is the meaning of enlightenment?" At that moment, the Zen master was planting trees, so he said, "Spiritual practice can be likened to transplanting this tree from here to a more suitable place, and then watering it every day, administering fertilizers, and so on. Slowly, the tree will grow. The same is true with spiritual practice."

Likewise, we usually focus our attention on the outside, on the wrong places, and make ourselves frustrated and agonized. An Enlightened Master teaches us how to direct our attention toward more useful places, which will be helpful to our soul and develop our inner power. Then we will return to our origins and finally realize that we are not this body, not those senseless and ephemeral thoughts. We are originally the wisdom and the love power; we are absolutely free.

Actually, there is nothing that we need to learn or do. If we simply discard everything that we have learned, and refrain from doing those things that we want to do, then everything is fine. That is right! It is precisely these senseless, undesirable materials that we have learned that fill our minds and bind us. They give us ideas about what a human being should be, what an Enlightened Saint should be, and what an Enlightened Master should be. In the end, we become shackled by these preconceived ideas, and thus cannot be liberated. If we can get rid of all these concepts, we are already half liberated. Then we can go on to cast aside what we want to do in order to become an Enlightened Saint, and everything is settled.

Back to Contents