READINESS

In Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, there is a story about a philosopher who once asked the Buddha, "Without words, without the wordless, can you tell me the truth?" The Buddha remained silent. The philosopher bowed and said, "With your loving kindness I have cleared my delusions and entered the true path." After the philosopher had gone, one of Buddha's disciples asked him, "What has the philosopher attained?" The Buddha replied, "A good horse runs at even the shadow of a whip." The true path, the right way for us to be in this life, is always at the point of dawning in our minds and hearts; the readiness is all that is necessary. Sometimes we read a word or a phrase in a book, or we hear someone utter a sentence or we silently gaze at a sunrise or the snowfall captures our heart, and suddenly we are, in that moment, transformed and nothing is the same ever again. C.S. Lewis was casually looking at an old beat-up book in a used bookstall one Saturday morning in London; as he started reading the book, he suddenly felt a spiritual awakening— in that instant he experienced a new dimension of being in which his whole way of life was transformed.