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ZEN TECHNIQUE designations. Hence there is no object in Zen on which to fix the thought. Zen is a wafting cloud in the sky. No screw fastens it, no string holds it; it moves as it lists. ... Meditation is not Zen."1
The moment, therefore, that the student has gained some measure of mental control he begins to destroy the fetters created by his thought. Thereafter meditation becomes a hindrance, not a help. It is "unnatural”, in that it hinders the flow of normal life.
A monk sat meditating all day long. His Master asked him what he sought. “My desire is to become a Buddha," said the monk. The Master picked up a piece of brick and began to polish it on a stone. Asked to explain his action, the Master said that he wished to make a mirror. “But no amount of polishing a brick will make it into a mirror," said the monk. "If so, no amount of sitting cross-legged will make thee into a Buddha," said the Master, who for once "explained” his reply. The monk, he said, was trying to attain to Buddhahood. But the Buddha has no fixed forms. “As he has no abiding place anywhere, no-one can take hold of him, nor can he be let go. If thou seekest Buddhahood by thus sitting crosslegged thou murderest him.”2 Thus the element of quietism in meditation, brought from India in the sixth century, was soon expelled by the Chinese Patriarchs. "To meditate," said Wei Lang, "means to realise inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind”; but “the Essence of Mind is intrinsically pure”, and does not need to be purified. All we have to do is to realise
1 Introduction to Zen Buddhism, p. 17. 2 Essays I, p. 222.
