..续本文上一页at”s somebody”s foot." When you don”t name things anymore, you start seeing them. Because say when a person says "I see a leaf," immediately, one thinks of a spearhead-shaped thing outlined in black and filled in with flat green. No leaf looks like that. No leaves--leaves are not green. That”s why Lao-Tzu said "the five colors make a man blind, the five tones make a man deaf," because if you can only see five colors, you”re blind, and if you can only hear five tones in music, you”re deaf. You see, if you force sound into five tones, you force color into five colors, you”re blind and deaf. The world of color is infinite, as is the world of sound. And it is only by stopping fixing conceptions on the world of color and the world of sound that you really begin to hear it and see it.

　　So this, should I be so bold as to use the word "discipline," of meditation or Za-zen lies behind the extraordinary capacity of Zen people to develop such great arts as the gardens, the tea ceremony, the caligraphy, and the grand painting of the Sum Dynasty, and of the Japanese Sumi tradition. And it was because, especially in tea ceremony, which means literally "cha-no-yu" in Japanese, meaning "hot water of tea," they found in the very center of things in everyday life, magic. In the words of the poet *Hokoji, "marvelous power and supernatural activity, drawing water, carrying wood." And you know how it is sometimes when you say a word and make the word meaningless, you take the word "yes"--yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It becomes funny. That”s why they use the word "mu" in Zen training, which means "no." Mu. And you get this going for a long time, and the word ceases to mean anything, and it becomes magical. Now, what you have to realize in the further continuence of Za-zen, that as you-- Well, let me say first in a preliminary way, the easiest way to stop thinking is first of all to think about something that doesn”t have any meaning. That”s my point in talking about "mu" or "yes," or counting your breath, or listening to a sound that has no meaning, because that stops you thinking, and you become fascinated in the sound. Then as you get on and you just--the sound only--there comes a point when the sound is taken away, and you”re wide open. Now at that point, there will be a kind of preliminary so-called subtlety, and you will think "wowee, that”s it!" You”ll be so happy, you”ll be walking on air. When Suzuki Daisetz was asked what was it like to have satori, he said "well, it”s like ordinary, everyday experience, except about two inches off the ground." But there”s another saying that the student who has obtained satori goes to hell as straight as an arrow. No satori around here, because anybody who has a spiritual experience, whether you get it through Za-zen, or through LSD, or anything, you know, that gives you that experience. If you hold on to it, say "now I”ve got it," it”s gone out of the window, because the minute you grab the living thing, it”s like catching a handful of water, the harder you clutch, the faster it squirts through your fingers. There”s nothing to get hold of, because you don”t NEED to get hold of anything. You had it from the beginning. Because you can see that, by various methods of meditation, but the trouble is that people come out of that an brag about it, say "I”ve seen it." Equally intolerable are the people who study Zen and come out and brag to their friends about how much their legs hurt, and how long they sat, and what an awful thing it was. They”re sickening. Because the discipline side of this thing is not meant to be something awful. It”s not done in a masochistic spirit, or a sadistic spirit: suffering builds character, therefore suffering is good for you. When I went to school in England, the basic pre…

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