BELOVED MASTER,

HYAKUJO CALLED HIS MONKS TOGETHER AS HE WISHED TO SEND ONE OF THEM TO OPEN A NEW MONASTERY. PLACING A FILLED WATER JAR ON THE GROUND, HE SAID, "WHO CAN SAY WHAT THIS IS WITHOUT USING ITS NAME?"

THE CHIEF MONK, WHO EXPECTED TO GET THE POSITION, SAID, "NO ONE CAN CALL IT A WOODEN SHOE." ANOTHER MONK SAID, "IT'S NOT A POND BECAUSE IT CAN BE CARRIED." THE COOKING MONK, WHO WAS STANDING NEARBY, WALKED OUT, KICKED THE JAR OVER, AND THEN WALKED AWAY.

HYAKUJO SMILED AND SAID, "THE COOKING MONK BECOMES THE MASTER OF THE NEW MONASTERY."

Reality cannot be known through thinking, it can be known through action. Thinking is just a dreamlike phenomenon, but the moment you act you have become part of the reality. Reality is activity, action; thinking is fragmentary. When you act you are total; whatever the action your whole being is involved in it. Thinking goes on in only a part of the mind, your whole being is not involved; without you thinking can continue as an automatic process.

This has to be understood deeply. This is one of the most basic things for those who are in search of truth and not in search of anything else. Religion and philosophy are distinct in this sense: religion is action, philosophy is thinking.

This story has many implications. The master wanted one, one disciple, to become the chief of the new monastery that was going to be opened. Who should be sent? Who should be made the guide there --  a man who has much philosophy in his mind, a man who can talk, discuss, argue, a man who is bookish, knowledgeable, or a man who can act spontaneously? He may not know much; he may be simple, not intellectual, but he will be total.

The chief disciple must have started dreaming, thinking he was going to be chosen. The mind is always ambitious. He must have planned how to behave, what to do, so that he would be chosen as the chief of the new monastery. He must not have slept for many days, his mind must have been revolving around and around.

The ego plans and whatsoever it plans will miss reality. Reality can only be encountered spontaneously; if you think about it beforehand you may be ready but you will miss. A ready person will miss; this is the contradiction. A person who is not ready, who has not planned anything, who acts spontaneously, reaches the very heart of reality.

The chief disciple must have theorized, many alternatives must have come to his mind: The master is going to choose; there is going to be some sort of test. He must have consulted the scriptures. In the old days too, masters had been choosing disciples to be sent to new monasteries. How have they chosen? What sort of examination has to be passed? How could he succeed?

There are many stories from the ancient days but this has been, almost always, one of the basic tests Zen masters have put before their disciples --  they ask them to express something without using language. They say, "Say something about this thing but don't use any name. The name is not the thing."

The chair is here and I am sitting on it. A Zen master will say, "Say something about this chair but don't use the name. The word chair is not the chair. Don't use any verbal expression, don't use language and say something."

The mind feels puzzled because the mind knows only language, nothing else. If language is barred, the mind is barred. What else is the mind except verbal accumulation --  names, words, language?

A master says, "Don't use the name." He is saying, "Don't use the mind. Do something so that which the chair is, is expressed."

The word god is not God, the word man is not man,

the word rose is not a rose. The rose exists when language is not there; when there is no language, the tree exists- it is not dependent on language.

This chief monk must have brooded over and over again. He must have chosen, beforehand, an alternative. He was dead, that very moment he failed.

Inside, if you decide what you are going to do and you act out of that decision, you will miss reality. Reality is an ever-flowing movement. Nobody knows what is going to happen, nobody can predict it; it is unpredictable.

There is a Zen story: Two monasteries existed side by side and both the masters had small boys to run errands. Both the boys used to go to the market to fetch things for the masters --  sometimes vegetables, sometimes other things.

These monasteries were antagonistic towards each other, but boys will be boys. They would forget the doctrines and meet on the way and talk, enjoy. It was really prohibited to talk --  the other monastery was the enemy.

One day, the boy from the first monastery came and said, "I am puzzled. As I was going to the market, I saw the boy from the other monastery and asked him, `Where are you going?' He replied, `Wherever the wind blows.' I was at a loss as to what to say; he puzzled me.

The master said, "This is not good. Nobody from our monastery

has ever been defeated by the other monastery, not even a servant, so you must fix that boy. Tomorrow, ask again where he is going. He will say, `Wherever the wind blows,' so you say, `If there is no wind, then?' "

The boy couldn't sleep the whole night. He tried and tried to conceive of what would happen the next day; he rehearsed many times. He would ask and the other boy would respond and then he would give his answer.

The next day he waited on the road. The other boy came and he asked, "Where are you going?" The boy said, "Wherever my feet lead me."

He was at a loss as to what to do. His answer was fixed; reality is unpredictable. He came back very sad and said to the master, "That boy is not trustworthy. He changed and I was at a loss as to what to do."

So the master said, "Next day when he answers, `Wherever my feet lead,' you tell him, `If you are crippled and your legs are cut off, then?' "

Again he couldn't sleep. He went early to wait on the road. When the boy came he asked, "Where are you going?" And the boy said "To fetch vegetables from the market."

He became very disturbed and said to the master, "This boy is impossible: he goes on changing."

Life is that boy. Reality is not a fixed phenomenon. You have to be present, spontaneously in it --  only then will the response be real. If your answer is fixed beforehand you are already dead, you have already missed. Then tomorrow will come but you will not be there; you will be fixed in the yesterday, that which has passed.

All the minds which are too verbal are fixed like this. Go to a pundit, a scholar, and ask, "What is God?" Before you have asked he will start answering. Your question is not answered because even before you had the question this man had the answer. The answer is dead; it is there already, it has just to be brought from the memory.

This is the difference between a man of wisdom and a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge has ready-made answers: you ask and the answer is already there. You are irrelevant, your question is irrelevant. Before the question, the answer exists; your question simply triggers the memory.

If you go to a man of wisdom he has no answers for you; he has nothing ready-made. He is open, he is silent. He'll respond but first your question will resound in his being, not in his memory. Through his being the response comes; nobody can predict that response. If you go the next day and ask the same question, the response will not be the same.

Once it happened that a man tried to judge the Buddha. Every year he would go and ask the same question. He thought, "If he really knows then the answer will be always the same. How can you change the answer? If I come and ask, `Is there God?'- if he knows he will say yes or he will say no, and next year, I will come again and ask."

So for many years the man came and he became more and more puzzled. Sometimes Buddha would say yes, sometimes no, sometimes he would remain silent, and sometimes he would simply smile and not answer anything.

The man became puzzled and said, "What is this? If you know, then you must be certain, your answer fixed. But you go on changing. Once you said yes then you said no. Have you forgotten that I asked this question before? Once you even remained silent and now you are smiling. That is why I have been coming with the gap of a year --  just to see if you know or not."

Buddha said, "When you came for the first time and asked, `Is there God,' I answered. But my answer was not to the question, it was to you. You have changed, now the same answer cannot be given. Not only have you changed, I also have changed. The Ganges has flowed much; the same answer cannot be given. I am not a scripture to be opened and the same answer found there."

A buddha is a living river, and a river is ever-flowing. In the morning it is different --  it reflects the gold of the rising sun. The mood is different. In the evening it is different, and when the night comes and the stars are reflected in it, it is different. In the summer it shrinks; it floods during the rains. A river is not a painting, it is a live force.

A painting remains the same whether it is raining or it is summer. A painted river will not be flooded in the rains; it is dead; otherwise there would be change. There is only one thing that goes on continuously and that is revolution. Everything else is impermanent except revolution. It goes on and on.

This chief disciple must have decided; the conclusion was already there. He was waiting only for the master to ask. Then the master put a jug before them, a pot filled with water, and said, "Say something and don't use language."

You are creating an impossible situation. How can something be said without using language? But if you cannot say something about an ordinary jug filled with water without using language, how will you be able to say anything about God, who is filled with the whole universe? If you cannot indicate this jug without language, how will you be able to indicate the great jug, the universe, God, the truth?

If you cannot indicate this, how will you be made chief of a monastery? People will be coming to you, not to know words but to know reality. People won't be coming to you to be trained in philosophy; that can be done by the universities - they teach words.

So what is the purpose of a monastery? A monastery has to teach reality not words; religion not philosophy; existence not theories. And if you can't say anything about an ordinary pot, what will you do when someone asks: What is God? What will you do when someone asks: Who am I?

The chief disciple answered, and whenever the mind faces such a situation the only way is to define negatively. If someone says to say something about God -- without naming, what will you do? You can only state it negatively. You can say: God is not this world,God is not matter.

Look at the dictionaries. Go to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and see how it defines things. You will be surprised: if you turn to the page where mind is defined you will find it defined as that which is not matter. Then turn to the page where matter is defined; you will find it defined as that which is not mind. What type of definition is this? When you ask about mind they say no-matter; when you ask about matter they say no-mind. Nothing is defined; it is a vicious circle. If I ask about A you say it is not B; if I ask about B you say it is not A. You define one thing by another indefinable thing. How can this be done? This is a tricky thing. Dictionaries are the trickiest things in the world; they don't say anything and they appear to be saying so much. Everything is defined and everything is indefinable. Nothing can be defined.

So the chief disciple said something negatively. When the mind is at a loss as to what to do it starts saying things negatively. So maybe atheism is just an escape. God is there but how to define it? When the mind feels at a loss the easiest escape is to say there is no God, then the problem is finished.

Somebody said, "It is not a pond because it can be carried by hand."

How can you define a water-filled jug by just saying it is not a pond? What is a pond? Say something without naming it.

Then the cook of the monastery came. He must have been a more real man than these pundits --  a cook, who has never been much interested in the scriptures; a cook, who has been working with reality, encountering it, not thinking about it. This cook kicked the pot and went out.

What did he say? He said something in a more realistic way. Kicking is not thinking, it is action. He kicked the pot and said to the master, "This is nonsense, you are talking absurdities. You say to us to say something without words. Something can be done without words, but nothing can be said." He caught the point. Something can be done without words but nothing can be said. So he did something - he kicked the pot.

The master said, "This cook has been chosen. He goes to the new monastery and there becomes the master. He knows how to act without the mind; he knows how to answer without using the mind. He has said that the problem is absurd."

Remember one thing: if the problem is absurd you cannot answer it in a rational way. If you try you will be foolish; it shows foolishness. If the problem is absurd you cannot answer in a rational way; for an absurd question there can be no rational answer. If you try, you simply prove that you are foolish. That chief disciple must have been a foolish man; the other scholar, who said, "This is not a pond,"must have been a foolish man. Scholars are foolish, otherwise they wouldn't be scholars. They are wasting their lives in words, scriptures. Nobody can waste his life in words unless he is absolutely stupid.

This cook was wiser- he kicked. He was not kicking the pot, he was kicking the whole problem; he was not kicking the pot, he was kicking the whole situation. He saw that it was absurd. He was not saying anything, not using a word. Just imagine that cook kicking the pot with his whole being. He was involved in it completely, mind, body, soul. The kick was alive, spontaneous; he didn't know it was going to be there. He may not even have thought that he was answering, he was just seeing what was going on - suddenly, the kick happened.

In this state of being, when the cook was just action, there was no mind in him, just an emptiness. Out of that emptiness, out of that no-mind, the action arose. When the action comes from the actor it is dead; when the action comes from the ego it is premeditated. When the action comes without the ego, without the mind, without you being there, when it bubbles up out of your nothingness, it is from the divine, it is total.

The cook didn't kick; rather, it was as if the whole existence kicked. He kicked all scholarship, all scriptures, the whole intellect and its vicious circles, and he walked out. He didn't wait. If he had waited to see what the master said he would have missed, because that would have meant that the mind was looking for the conclusion, for the result.

The mind is always result-oriented: What is going to happen? If I do this, then what will happen? If the cause is there, what will be the effect? The mind is always for the result; the mind is result-oriented.

This cook simply walked out. He didn't wait for what was going to happen; he didn't think that he would be chosen. How can you think that just by kicking a pot you will be chosen the master of a monastery? No, he didn't bother.

This is what Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Do! Act! But don't ask for the result. Kick and walk out."

Arjuna said, "If I fight, if I go through with this war, what will happen? What will be the result? Will it be good or bad? Will I gain or lose? Will killing so many people be worth the effort?"

Krishna says, "Don't think of the result. Leave the result to me: you simply act."

The mind cannot do that. Before the mind acts it asks for the result; it acts because of the result. If there will be a result, only then will it act.

People come to me and ask, "If we meditate, what will happen? What will be the result?"

Remember, meditation can never be result-oriented; you simply meditate, that's all. Everything happens but it will not be a result. If you are seeking the result nothing will happen; meditation will be useless.

When you seek a result, it is the mind; when you don't seek a result, it is meditation. Kick the pot and walk out, meditate and walk out; don't ask for the result. Don't say, "What will happen?" If you think about what will happen you cannot meditate. The mind goes on thinking about the result; it cannot be here and now, it is always in the future. You are meditating and thinking, "When will the happiness come? It has not come yet."

If you forget the result completely, if there is not even a flicker in the mind for the result, not a single vibration moving into the future - when you have become a silent pool, here and now everything happens. In meditation cause and effect are not two -.cause is the effect; the act and the result are not two - the act is the result - they are not divided. In meditation the seed and the tree are not two -, the seed is the tree.

For the mind everything is divided: the seed and the tree are two, the act and the result are two. The result is always in the future and the act is here, you act because of the future. For the mind the present is always sacrificed for the future, and the future does not exist. There is always the present, the eternal now, and you are sacrificing this now for something which is nowhere and cannot be anywhere.

In meditation the whole process is reversed. The future is sacrificed for the present; that which is not is sacrificed for that which is. There is no result, no conclusion. Kick the pot and walk out.

That was the beauty of it. The cook simply walked out saying, "The whole thing is absurd -. your question and these people's answers. This is a nonsense game. I don't belong here." He must have gone to his kitchen and started working -  that is how a meditative mind will act. And the master said, "This man is chosen, he becomes the chief of the new monastery. He knows how to be total, to act spontaneously; he knows how to act without motivation; he knows how to act without the mind. This man can lead others into meditation, this man can become a guide. This man has achieved.

The story is beautiful and very rare; penetrate into it. You can penetrate it but only if you start acting the way the cook acted. There is a pitfall - you can premeditate it. If I put a pot before you and you kick, you will miss; you know the answer already. You will think, "Okay now, this is the opportunity. I'll kick the pot and walk out." That won't do. You cannot deceive because whenever your mind is there your total being gives a different vibration. You cannot deceive a master.

And remember, this incident has been repeated many times. Zen masters are really unique. They go on repeating the same problem again and again, and those who read the scriptures behave in the old way. They think they already know the answer: kick the pot, walk out, and become the chief.

But you cannot deceive a Zen master. He is not concerned with what you are doing, he is concerned with what you are in that moment of doing. That is a totally different thing. You have a perfume, a different perfume, when you act out of emptiness. And when I say a different perfume I mean it literally, I'm not using a metaphor. When you act out of emptiness there is a freshness all around you, as if suddenly a morning has come in the middle of the day. If you kick the pot ego will be there; the ego will do the kicking and you will be aggressive. When this cook kicked the pot it was not aggressive, it was simply a statement of fact; there was no violence.

I have heard that one man, a poor beggar - and I say "poor beggar" because there are wealthy beggars also - came to ask for food. The lady of the house felt much compassion for him and said, "I'll give you food, and if you want some work there is wood to chop. I'll pay you for it."

So the man worked, chopped the wood, and in the evening when he was about to go, the lady of the house said, "There is a hole in your robe. Give it to me and within minutes I will repair it.

The man said, "No, a hole in my robe makes all the difference. When you have a repaired dress it is premeditated poverty; when you have a hole in your robe it may have happened just now, through some accident. But when you have patched it, it looks ancient - it has not happened accidentally, just now; it's happened long before and now it's been patched and repaired. It becomes premeditated poverty. Let my poverty be spontaneous."

Your whole mind is premeditated poverty; you have all the answers and not a single response. You have already decided what to do, and in that decision you have murdered yourself, committed suicide. The mind is suicide.

Start acting spontaneously. It will be difficult in the beginning, you will feel much discomfort. With a premeditated answer there is less discomfort, you are more certain. Why are we not spontaneous? It is because of fear, the fear that the answer may be wrong. It's better to decide beforehand then you can be certain; but certainty always belongs to death.

Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God.

Act spontaneously. If there is discomfort in the beginning allow it to be there; don't hide it and don't suppress it - and don't imitate. Be childlike but don't be childish. If you are childlike, you will become a great saint; if you are childish, you will become a great, knowledgeable person.

A man returned to his house one day. He saw his children and the neighbor's children sitting on the steps, so he asked, "What are you doing?"

They said, " We are playing church."

He was puzzled; they were just sitting there doing nothing. He inquired, "What type of church is this?"

They said, "We have sung, preached, prayed. Everything has been done, now we are sitting on the steps, smoking."

You can imitate - knowledgeability is imitation. A buddha says something: you interpret it, you play church, you cram it in your mind, you repeat it. This is childish.

Be childlike not childish. Childlikeness is spontaneity. A child is fresh with no answers, no accumulated experience; he has, really, no memory, he acts; whatever comes through his being, he acts. He is not motivated, not thinking about results, about the future; he is innocent.

This cook was really innocent. Innocence is meditation. Start being meditative in your acts, just with small things: while eating, be spontaneous; while talking, be spontaneous; while walking, be spontaneous. Allow life to be a response not an answer. If somebody asks you something, just watch whether you are repeating something you always do, just a habit, or whether the answer is a response. Just watch whether the mind is repeating an old habit, whether the answer is coming from memory, or whether it is coming from you.

Everybody bores everybody else because everything is dead, borrowed, stale, and stinks of death. It is not fresh. Look at children playing and you feel a freshness. For a moment you may even forget that you have become old. Listen to the birds, look at the trees or flowers and for a moment, forget. Here there is no mind.

Flowers are flowering: just like the cook kicked they are kicking. Birds are singing, they are kicking. Life itself is kicking - but there are no theories. In the beginning it will be uncomfortable. Be patient, go through that discomfort; soon you will have an upsurge of energy. It is dangerous, that's why people avoid it.

To be spontaneous is dangerous because when anger comes, it comes. The mind says, " Think - don't be angry, it may be costly." So you always think and throw your anger on those weaker than you, not on those who are stronger than you. Love can happen but love is not allowed. You can have a loving attitude only towards your wife, but life does not know who is your wife and who is not. Life is absolutely amoral, it knows no morality. You can fall in love with somebody else's wife, because life knows no relations, no fixed institutions. All institutions are man made; that is the danger. So the mind says, " Think before - she is not your wife. Don't look in such a loving way, don't smile." Whether you feel it or not is not the point, this is duty. That is how we have killed everybody. Everybody lives in an institution, not in life.

Because of these dangers the mind thinks of what to say beforehand. You are late, and when you come home you are thinking, "What will my wife say? How will I answer?" The wife is waiting and she knows whatever you will say is wrong. She has heard your excuses before, the same old excuses.

I have heard that one man phoned his wife one day

and said, "One of my friends has come and I'm bringing him home for dinner."

The wife screamed and said, "You fool, you know very well the cook has left, the baby is cutting his teeth, and I have had a fever for three days."

The man replied, very calmly, "I know it well, that is why I want to bring him home. The fool is thinking of getting married."

The whole of life has become an institution, a madhouse in which duties are to be fulfilled not love; in which you have to behave, not be spontaneous; in which a pattern has to be followed, not the overflow of life and energy. That's why the mind thinks and decides everything, because there is danger.

I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real.

This is difficult: there is much investment in falsity, in the masks, in the faces, in the games you go on playing. To be initiated as a sannyasin means now you will try to be authentic; whatsoever the consequences, you will accept them and live in the present. You will sacrifice the future for the present; you will never sacrifice the present for the future. This moment will be the totality of your being, you will never move beforehand.

This is what sannyas is - to kick the pot and walk out, and not to wait for the results. Results will take care of themselves, they will follow you.

This story doesn't say it but I know, the master must have run out to catch hold of the cook and said, "Wait, you have been chosen. You go to the new monastery to guide people in life and meditation."