* The “flower talk” * What sound does a single palm make? * What is the secret of alertness? *
Legend says that one day Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha gave a silent sermon to his disciples. He appeared before his assembled devotees eager to hear him speak, holding a beautiful white flower in his hand and contemplating it for a long time, smiling. The disciples must have been astonished: their clever minds were expecting a speech that they could interpret at their convenience, but they did not get it. Instead, they saw only a teacher pondering a flower. Yet there was a wandering monk among them, Mahakashyapa, who suddenly smiled: He was the one who understood the essence of the flower talk: be here and now, see the unparalleled wonder beyond concepts in everything. And the Buddha said, "I have given you the most precious treasure beyond mind and reason, Venerable Mahakashyapa!"
All doctrine becomes dogma if we fall in love only with the form of doctrine, and living truth if we regard it as a finger pointing to an intangible but existent spirit beyond doctrine, beyond reason.
Just as happened later with Jesus, the Buddha's discourses were interpreted and misinterpreted by the monks according to their own ideas; they founded commentary and discussion sects, invented all kinds of rituals, and thus religious institutions were created. Teaching that pointed to the spirit has largely disappeared, and in its place egoistic, interest-representing institutions have been born to replace the spirit..
The cat in the monastery always made a lot of noise when the spiritual teacher and the disciples sat down for evening meditation. This noise distracted the disciples, so they ordered the cat to be tied up during meditation. From that point on, everything worked well: the cat was tied, there was a pleasant silence, and the disciples could immerse themselves in their meditation. Then a few years passed, the teacher died and the cat died as well. And the disciples at that time remembered the tied cat, got a cat and tied it up for their meditations. A few centuries later, the teacher's highly knowledgeable and very clever descendants wrote elaborate treatises on the ritual and the religious significance of the tying the cat.
This is how we work. Rituals, ceremonies, conversations, chats, or memorizing wisdom are often more important than direct experience. Religious ceremony, form, becomes important, while the real essence, the experience of the one spirit, is lost. And so it is today: the lovers of religious formality are not concerned with experiencing the spirit, but with dissecting the forms of the teachings.
The chan/zen school founded by the smiling Mahakashyapa is one of the spiritual paths where the study of sacred scriptures is sidelined, the emphasis is not on dogma, but on direct experience. The monks are given a seemingly meaningless puzzle or koan full of contradictions to ponder. And when their minds are tired of trying to find the many, many clever (i.e., reasoned), answers, they give up the search for a logical answer and experience the truth of the koan directly. This can sometimes take 10 to 20 years, during which time the Zen master will hit and scold his students, twist their noses in meditation, hit them with his wand... all unexpectedly. With such "madness" the master wakes you up, brings you back to direct experience.
One of these beautiful beautiful questions, koans sounds like this:
When you clap your hands together, you hear the sound of clapping. But what is the sound of a single palm?
The student who is "suffering" on the spiritual path contemplates all sorts of "clever" answers, mostly just to please his master. He finds a plethora of rational explanations ("a palm has no sound"), beautiful, artistic solutions ("the sound of a palm contains the beauty of the universe") and answers that make him want to stand out. Whatever the clever explanations, none of them solves the mystery of the koan. For the only real Truth lies in direct experience.
Two palms have a loud, audible sound: a clap, which is a sharp, perceptible, ordinary sound. The single palm does not make such a "tangible", palpable sound, but it does have a sound. Don't ponder it, don't come up with the logical explanation, "It doesn't have a voice! A palm cannot have any sound!" - because that statement is simply false. The only one palm, held up, has the most beautiful sound.
Experience it! Hold up your hands, open your fingers and stare at your palms. Listen, listen hard to hear the sound of a single palm. Listen like the deer hunting in the forest, like the vigilant kitten, like the one fearing for her life - listening with maximum attention! Your palm has a voice, and hear that still “noice”! Listen to the silence within.
When you give your full attention to hearing the silent noice that you thought was inaudible, something strange happens: suddenly you are present. Your mind is not dwelling in the past, not weaving the future, but present. You are in the moment of the eternal now. Because the only reality that is, is NOW. There has never been a moment that was not now. You remember the dead memories of the past now, you weave the dreams of the future now. There is only the one, infinite, eternal NOW moment. And in this present moment, your mind is empty, your attention maximal, alert, aware. Then you experience the miracle that you have not experienced before: for that Something, that waking awareness, precedes thought and is beyond thought. Nothing can be thought about it, but it can be experienced all the more in the state of wakefulness. This wonder is the sound of a single palm! Just listen, listen hard, be fully awake to hear the miracle of the voice of the single palm!
The story goes that Master Gutei taught the essence of Zen with his finger raised. One of the boys in the village began to imitate this habit: whenever he heard about Gutei's teachings, he would interrupt the conversation and raise one finger. Gutei heard about the boy's pranks, so when he saw him in the street, he grabbed him and cut off his finger. The boy started crying and ran away, but Gutei called after him. When the boy turned around, Gutei held up a finger in the air. At that moment, the boy became enlightened.
The raised finger is a warning: a sign to always pay attention! Be alert! Be in the present moment! Be in the eternal now! And you can achieve this by being constantly alert. You are so watchful, as if some danger could come at any moment, and if you are not present, not watching, it could mean the end of your life!
One day, when the Zen disciple was in the wilderness, he came across a tiger. He started running to save his skin, but soon came to the edge of a precipice. He noticed a vine and started climbing down it. As he crawled down, two hungry mice began to chew on the vine, and as he looked down into the abyss, he saw another tiger, hungrily eyeing his prey. And then he saw a strawberry in a crack in the rock face. He plucked the ripe, beautiful fruit, ate it with relish, and said:
"- Oh, how delicious and juicy these strawberries are!"
What is enlightenment? You can talk about it, you can spout rehearsed wisdom about it... but it's all meaningless if you don't have direct experience of it. Dogma is a dead word, a writing set in stone, the only real Truth is always found in the direct experience of the present moment
Get out in nature, be vigilant! Be there, be present - and listen to the sound of the stream on the distant mountain, the fly's flight, feel the air currents caressing your skin, feel the energy flowing in every part of you!
Enjoy the taste of now!
Excerpt from the book "The Mysteries of Consciousness” by Ervin Kery