A Taste of the Other Shore

 The Secret of Yourself

What I would like to communicate to you all is impossible to say.

“The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao,” said Lao Tzu. “He who speaks does not know, he who knows does not speak.” Because whatever is said, the mind grasps, the mind interprets. The mind is a satellite to reality; it is one remove from reality. It interprets reality continuously; it builds its own story out of reality according to its model. And that model has been developed by all of the interpretations it has made throughout the life.

Each mind has its own interpretation, naturally influenced by the culture and the traditions and the teachings that it has received - and ultimately always influenced by human knowledge and understanding so far. The mind is like a scientist who is constantly looking for a new truth. But the truth is always present. What the mind is looking for, what the scientists are looking for, is an understanding of the truth. But that understanding is itself a child of the truth. This is the game that the mind plays; and there’s nothing wrong with it. It is an activity, it is an entertainment; it is food for the mind. But the taste of reality, and the living of reality, is unchanged, is unaffected, by all the attempts to understand what it is. If life was not new every moment, there would be no life. Life cannot go stale. Life this moment is no more or less alive than life in any other moment up to this moment.

Aspects of life - human beings, animals, birds, fish, trees, plants - they all go through processes and eventually die. Nothing lasts; and even things that last a long time are slowly deteriorating. You pick a peach of the tree - within a week or two it is rotten. You make some beautiful bread - within a few days it is stale. But life, the essence of life, is not touched in this way. So life never deteriorates; the essence of life never deteriorates.

This essence of life that never deteriorates is in you. Your body deteriorates, for some people the mind deteriorates - all the aspects of our human life seem to deteriorate. So if you identify with them, then you too will deteriorate. But if you connect with that which never deteriorates - the pure life itself - then you will never deteriorate. Then you are also always fresh - like life itself. Why can you not find that freshness? Because you are elsewhere, you are lost in ideas and dreams, hopes and fears; you are lost in the future, busy with the past - and neither of these is the freshness of the moment. You will only find this freshness in the moment. It is like a spring bubbling out of the earth. We call it something - a spring - but in truth the water bubbling up is fresh every instant. The spring is never the same - looks the same, but it is not.

You visit a hot spring, and you see water bubbling up; you go back a year later, the water is bubbling up - you say, “Nothing has changed.” But of course it is absolutely fresh. We talk about the river - this river, that river - but the water in the river is changing every instant. From one instant to another it is a new river. And from one instant to another you are a new person. So what about your identity? How can you have an identity when you are fresh every moment? And conversely, if you have an identity, how can you be fresh every moment?

This instant is new, this instant is new, this instant is new. But if you put a stamp on it and say, “Well, I have to change whatever is coming through to fit my identity,” then the identity dominates your reality, and you don’t feel the freshness and the newness each moment.

If you have no identity, then you have no constancy, then you have no self. There is no self. There is just something new happening where you are - sitting, standing, walking, being - at each moment. And that movement that comes through you is what you are. That is what you are; you don’t need to have an identity on top of that. You are putting a rock on top of the spring. And only a few tiny little streams manage to get round the rock - just a little bit of freshness.

One has to roll the rock away, and simply be where one always is. You are there whether you recognise it or not. The rock does not stop the spring from springing; it will find a way through somewhere. But it will not nourish you, because it will go underground. But if you roll the rock away, then you are just standing in life, and allowing whatever is happening to happen. There is nothing you can do, or want to do, about it, because that is who you are - and you’re not going to interfere with it. Then you stand empty, but open to whatever is playing through you. And then you are continuously in touch with the source of life - not only with the source of your life, but with the source of all life.

To roll the rock away and to simply be where the spring is bubbling through, moment by moment - without any interference, without putting any stamp on it, without trying to create an identity out of it - to be there moment by moment is to be enlightened.

To be enlightened is to be awake. And to be awake means to be no longer dreaming. Now, if you are in the moment, where is the space from dreaming? What can you dream in a split second? A dream needs time, and it needs not to be destroyed in an instant. You have to simply refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with any dreams, any thoughts, any continuity. You have to push the rock aside, and then you have to be careful that it does not roll back; you have to keep the space clear. That is the only meditation. All other meditations are helpful, but they will not bring you to the goal.

This is the meaning of the Zen statement: Enlightenment is practice and practice is enlightenment. It doesn’t mean the practice of some form of meditation. It means the practice of staying enlightened, and not allowing the rock to roll back and block the movements and the flow of the pure spring. So I have told you the secret of yourself. It is an open secret.

I cannot give you the movement into your purity; only you can make that movement. All that I can do when I meet people is to allow myself to function from my open space.

What I do when I allow myself to function from this open space is what we call ‘energy work’, but for me it is not work, it is what this person does form this space when he meets people in this situation - it is what spontaneously happens for me. It is like breathing, for me. So it has the flavour of the pure space that I have found. And through that connection, on an energy level, maybe some resonance will happen, so that the source that is in you will itself begin to arise and push the boulder aside. I cannot give you the rose, but I can give you the scent of the rose.

Talk given during a seminar in Düsseldorf, 02.10 1993