When I really look, I see that all my thoughts are lies. Lies in the sense that they don't actually represent reality; lies in the sense that none of them can actually represent "the truth," because the truth can't be put into words.
My thoughts are all just stories of one kind or another—stories about people, stories about the world, and my personal favorites, stories about how people and the world and my life and everything under the sun should be.
When I'm able to see that all the stories are lies, then I can catch a glimpse of the truth, which lies beneath all thoughts and stories and theories and has no words at all.
The Buddha held out a flower one day to the assembled monks and said nothing. There was just silence. After awhile the monk Mahakasyapa laughed. The Buddha handed Mahakasyapa the flower, saying that he had gotten his message. And from Mahakasyapa came the lineage that became Zen.
Zen is often described by its masters as a wordless transmission, because there are no "truths" involved; there is nothing to believe.
One day a monk complained to a Zen master that the master wasn't telling him everything, that the master was withholding the most important things.
"Do you see that flower?" said the master.
"Yes," said the monk.
"You see, I have withheld nothing from you," said the master.
But the mind always wants more. There must be something else; the truth must be in some heavenly realm somewhere, or contained in some beautiful phrase or rule or axiom. But perhaps it's contained in each ordinary moment.
Another master was asked, "What is Zen?" The master replied, "The tree in the courtyard."
To want more is the nature of the mind. But to be truly greedy you have to want more than that, almost more than can be imagined. It looks like this:
I want to be sitting here like this, typing into a computer. I want to have a cup of tea by my side. I want to be wearing a bathrobe exactly like this one, and sipping on tea that tastes just like this.
I want to be in a room with a beige rug on the floor, in a desk chair just like this one, and be using a Mac. And I want it to be 1:19 am. And I want to feel exactly as I do, and be tired exactly as I am, and be typing this exact article. Now that's greed.
—jim sloman, for 10/29/01
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