"Zen is a non-thinking, silent rejoicing within yourself, a dance of consciousness without any boundaries of words, thoughts.

"Suigan was wrong from the very beginning when he thought that he had attained something of Zen. Secondly, it is not possible to attain Zen in installments. It is absolutely un-American. Either you have it in its wholeness or you don't have it. But in parts, it is not available. Nothing can be done about it; this is the very nature of things. So on both counts he was wrong.

"First, he thought – and Zen is beyond thinking. Second, he thought that he had got something of Zen. You cannot get 'something of Zen'; it never comes in parts and pieces, it is not a retail shop. It is wholesale: when it comes, it comes so totally that it leaves no space for any thought.

"But Suigan, thinking he had attained something of Zen, left Jimyo's monastery – his master.

"These anecdotes are being lived here again. We are not reading them, we are living them; there is no other way to understand them. There are many sannyasins who have left, thinking they have attained something. Suigan is only symbolic. Somendra thinks he has attained something, Rajen thinks he has attained something. And there are many Somendras and many Rajens.

"Don't belong to that category, any of you, because it is very easy for the mind to persuade you that you have attained it. It asks: 'What are you doing here?' Remember this when your mind says, 'My God, in what unknown space did I enter? I cannot figure it out, what it is – a taste, a sweetness, a fragrance, a joy, a song without words, a music without any instruments.'

"The old Chinese proverb is: 'When the musician becomes perfect, he throws away his instruments. When the archer becomes perfect, he forgets about his bow and his arrows.'

"When a meditator comes to his very center, there is certainly a dance, an immense blissfulness overflowing, but there is no thought. Beware of thinking – that is your enemy number one.

Suigan, thinking he had attained something of Zen,
left Jimyo's monastery, when he was still a young monk,
to travel all over China.
Years later, when Suigan returned to visit the monastery,
his old teacher asked,
'Tell me the summary of Buddhism.'

"