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ZEN BUDDHISM them, develop them, express the highest in you by their means. And if it is not, do not ignore them. Take them for a run at times. Sing, shout, get excited, whether with great beauty, a local football match or, best of all, great fun. Compete, if you will, in sport or trade or politics, so long as you do not imagine that it matters in the least who wins. It is the excitement itself, the letting off steam, which matters; the game, whether of football, national politics or international war, has no intrinsic validity. There is only Mind-Mind-Only; the rest is the crackling of thorns under a pot.
All this is using Zen, for Zen is life, and all life, whether that of the film-star or the maggot, is good Zen. But let us apply it to more serious things, if there are more serious things, which, as we say in the Law, is not admitted. How do you solve a problem? The answer should be that you don't. If you are wise you never allow it to be born. "All difficult things in the world start from the easy; all great things in the world start from the small.” Thus the Tao Te Ching. And again, better still, “Deal with a thing before it comes into existence." There lies the solution, for the problem, do not forget, is born in, and has its sole existence in, the mind. It is raining and you have left your umbrella behind. That is not in itself a problem. Nor is the fact that you are in debt, have lost your job, and are being pressed to pay. These facts in a relative world are relatively true, but the problem is something added to the facts by your mind. You must either, therefore, kill it at birth, or later "solve" it, remembering that the larger it grows the larger will be the Giant which Jack the Giant-Killer will have to kill. But even if it is allowed to arise, do not attempt to solve it; dissolve it.
