"Those who escaped alive reached to China, to Tibet, to Korea, Taiwan, Japan, all over Asia.

"It is a strange and sad story that India gave birth to one of the greatest men of the world, but the mediocre masses of India could not understand him. The distance was too much: the distance was between mind and no-mind.

"Gautam Buddha is a quantum leap. He does not teach you any theology, he simply wants you to be, neither acting, nor not acting, but just being. He has no God to preach to you, no rituals to be followed; he is the first man in the world to make freedom of being the ultimate right of every living creature.

"Obviously the very ancient tradition of Indian scholarship could not tolerate him. But in his presence a few blessed ones drank as deeply from his well as possible; but when his body was dead, his last incarnation was finished and he became a part of the total existence. India goes on proclaiming itself the land of Gautam Buddha without seeing the point that they killed him. Of course they killed him with sophistication, not like Jews crucifying Jesus or Greeks poisoning Socrates; they did it in a more subtle way: by not understanding him.

"The anecdote has to be understood against this background.

An Indian disciple of Eno, Kutta Sanzo,
on passing through a village
found a monk doing zazen in a small hut he had built.

"Zazen means just being, neither doing something, nor not doing anything; an utter silence.

Sanzo asked, 'What is the idea
of sitting here all by yourself?'

"It is not only Sanzo; it has been asked by this whole country and it is being asked today by the whole world. The question is significant.

'What is the idea
of sitting here all by yourself?'
The monk answered, 'I'm meditating.'

"Now, before entering into the anecdote deeply, you have to understand that there is no word which can translate zazen. Meditation is just a faraway echo, because a word is needed only if a certain experience requires it. In the English language there are three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation, but all three words point to an object."