Lin-chi was sitting on the bank of the river when a philosopher approached him, bowed and asked the question: “What is the essence of your teaching?” Lin-chi looked at him and did not say a single word. The philosopher thought to himself: “He is very old, probably also deaf,” and shouted:
- Looks like you can't hear me! I ask, what is the essence of your message?
Lin-chi laughed. The philosopher thought: “Something strange. At first he didn’t answer, now he’s laughing! Maybe he's pretending to hear me? But since he didn’t answer my question, it means he didn’t hear anything.” And then the scientist shouted even louder:
“I ask, what is the essence of your teaching?”
Lin-chi said calmly:
- At first I answered - silence. But you couldn't understand it, and I had to go a little lower. I said - laughter, joy. But you could not understand even this. So I have to go even lower.
And he wrote with his finger in the sand: “Meditation,” saying: “This is my teaching.”
The scientist asked:
— Could you clarify your thought, make it clearer?
Then Lin-chi wrote in the sand in larger letters: “Meditation.”
The philosopher became increasingly irritated and asked:
-Are you kidding? I ask you to clarify, to detail your thought, and you write the same thing, only in larger letters. I'm a philosophy professor!
Lin-chi exclaimed:
- Why didn’t you say so right away?
And he wrote: “Not the mind.”
The professor hit himself on the head and left without even saying goodbye.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru