“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” William S. Burroughs
A story from Alan Watts.
I will write more about ecstatic truth in another post but it is something important that all people need to understand.
So many want to know things through logic, the lego system we’ve been trained to think with and through by scientific materialism. Proofs. Rational thought. X + Y = Z.
However, life, nature, existence itself is crooked. It works in a differently way and truth can’t be stuffed into a heart like bread into a plastic bag.
Poetry isn’t something you chop up, microscope, examine, to arrive at an explanation. Reading poetry is allowing the world to exist in you, grow in you, without those filters. This is the Zen understanding of Suibi.
A kind of minor metanoia.
My own Zen story.
A student comes to a master asking the usual question. How can I find the Buddha? How can I understand the meaning of everything?
The master handed the student a box. The student found a quiet place and opened the box. It was a puzzle but made with hundreds of clear glass pieces. The student started to put the puzzle together and to find his answers.
After a whole afternoon, the student was angry and frustrated. He didn't have one puzzle piece put together. There weren't even any pieces with corners. All the pieces looked the same except for very, very small differences.
The next day he returned to the master and said, "What is this? How can one solve a puzzle that has no picture? It is clear glass.
The master said, "Try again".
This went on and on for days, weeks, months. Finally, the student couldn't take it any more and went to the master. He threw the puzzle on the floor, the pieces spilling everywhere. He screamed, "This is no way to nirvana! How can one make something from nothing?"
The master answered, "Only when you begin to see the spaces between everything, will you picture everything." "You must learn to see what is not there." "Only then will the puzzle have a picture."
Deeper Truths