What is Zen?

One day, a student from Chicago came to the Providence Zen Center and asked Zen Master Seung Sahn: “What is Zen?

Dae Soen Sa Nim* held his stick above his head and said, “Do you understand?”

The student replied: “I don’t know”.

Dae Soen Sa Nim said: “This white-not-mind, that’s you! Zen is about understanding yourself.”

The disciple asked and pleaded: ‘How do you understand me? Teach me.’

Dae Soen Sa Nim said: “In a cookie factory, various cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people and airplanes. They all have different names and shapes, but they are made from the same dough and they all taste the same. In the same way, all things in the universe – the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, people and so on – have different names and shapes, but they all have the same texture. The universe is organized in pairs of opposites: Light and darkness, man and woman, noise and silence, good and evil. But these opposites belong together because they have the same nature. Their names and their forms are different, but their nature is the same. Names and forms arise through our thinking.
If you do not think and do not attach names and forms, everything is of the same nature. Your know-nothing mind has cut off all thinking. This is your nature. The nature of this Zen stick and your own nature are identical. You are this stick, and this stick is you.”

The student asked: “Some philosophers say that this quality is energy, spirit, God or matter. Which of them is right?”

Dae Soen Sa Nim said: “Four blind men went to the zoo and visited the elephant. One blind man touched the side of the elephant and said, “The elephant is like a wall.” The next blind man touched the trunk and said: “The elephant is like a snake.” The next blind man touched the leg and said: “The elephant is like a pillar.” The last blind man touched the tail and said: “The elephant is like a broom.” Then the four blind men began to argue because each believed that only he was right. Each understood only the part he had touched; none understood the whole. The nature has neither name nor form. “Energy”, “spirit”, “God” and “matter” – these terms are all name and form. But the nature is the absolute. If there is a name and a form, there are also opposites. And so the whole world is like the blind arguing among themselves. If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand the truth. That’s why we all argue with each other. If everyone in the world understood themselves, they could attain the absolute. Then there would be peace in the world. World peace, that is Zen!”

The student asked: “How can you achieve world peace by practicing Zen?”

Dae Soen Sa Nim replied: “People strive for money, fame, sex, food and rest. All this striving arises in thinking. To think is to suffer. To suffer means that there is no world peace. Not to think means not to suffer. Not to suffer means world peace. World peace is the absolute. The absolute is the self.”

The student asked: “How can I understand the absolute?”

Dae Soen Sa Nim replied: “First you have to understand yourself.”

“How can I understand myself?”

Dae Soen Sa Nim held up the Zen stick and said, “Do you see this?”
Then he quickly hit the table with the stick and said, “Do you hear this?
This stick, this sound, your spirit – are they the same or different?”

The student said, “The same.”

Dae Soen Sa Nim said, “If you say they are the same, I will give you thirty strokes. If you say they are different, I will also give you thirty strokes. Why?”
The disciple was silent.
Dae Soen Sa Nim shouted, “KAAATZ!!!” Then he said, “Spring is coming, the grass will grow by itself.”

* Dae Soen Sa Nim: honorific form of address and designation for a Zen master. Zen master Seung Sahn was and is often called this by his students.