Zen Story: The Zen Master who refused to be taught, nor to learn anything.
@innertalks (21916)
Australia
November 1, 2020 7:56pm CST
The great Zen Master, Hertlick Zesloske, once told his students, that he had never learnt anything, nor had he ever taken any lessons, in his life.
One bright student then asked him:
"If that was so, how come we are your students, and you are teaching us?"
The master replied, with a twist of his well-known humour:
"Yes, some do think that we trigger lessons for ourselves that create for us lessons about what we most need to learn, or what we most need to feel, or even just that which we most need to think, or to be conscious of right now."
"This is mostly camel's dung talk, my young friends."
The old master suddenly started to jump up and down, most violently on the spot, until he finally sat down, exhausted.
"This is what such lessons do to you, my friends."
"None of this is necessary."
"Lessons are all artificial."
"Just walk with the walk, and let the Zen be you now, rather than you thinking that you need lessons to be who you already are."
"Does God need lessons?"
"No!"
"Well, neither do any of you!"
"On the other end of the scale, does a rock need a lesson to be a rock?"
"No!"
"Well, neither do you too."
The bright student then said more loudly, but also hesitatingly:
"But, but, none of this really answers really my question either."
The master smiled, and an acorn fell out from the nearby tree, and struck the student on his noggin."
"Did that acorn ask itself, why it must fall on your head?"
"If you want to be wholly you now, do not let yourself be partially you, by thinking that you need lessons to be you."
"You never do! Be you now!"
"But in answer to your question."
"Why is the acorn, the acorn, and the tree, the tree?"
"So, it is with me, and you too, if you see it as being that way too."
"See now, and be now."
"You do not need lessons to let your eyes see, nor do you need lessons to be the real you."
Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com
A rock never learns to be a rock! God never learns to be God!
Is the rock, or God, any different in its essence than you?
5 people like this
3 responses
@erictsuma (9726)
• Mombasa, Kenya
2 Nov 20
There's no difference but we people we believe that in order to be successful in life we must learn some skills or knowledge professionally in order to be accepted by our employers.
4 people like this
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
2 Nov 20
Yes, most everyone else believes that too.
Some spiritual New Age religions go even further and claim that life itself gives us lessons to learn something from too.
The whole point of this Zen master is though, we do not need to strive to learn anything.
The striving is wasted effort. If we learn, we learn. Life fills us with learning naturally. We do not need to do anything else, unnaturally.
Just let any learning be itself in us too.
The learning comes of itself. The acorn falls of itself.
Love never learns to love; a baby loves naturally, and so should we adopt ourselves to learning.
Let the learning be itself in us, rather than us trying to be the learning.
@erictsuma (9726)
• Mombasa, Kenya
4 Nov 20
@innertalks I totally agree with you my friend
2 people like this
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
4 Nov 20
@erictsuma Thanks, I must have made a good case for my position of my thought here then.
I was not sure how clear I was being there.
@Shiva49 (26681)
• Singapore
2 Nov 20
We can self-learn and teachers are there only to show us the way, the right direction, and how to learn.
Most of what I had learned is by keeping my eyes and ears open and not from bookish knowledge that can get dated.
Intuition can teach us more than what we can imbibe from others but we need to tune in to the right frequency.
Lots that I read in scriptures I feel I know intuitively.
Lifelong learning keeps us alive; it is the spirit of inquiry that gives us the urge and the thirst for knowledge and what life is about.
Being human is the best method for us and we need to be truthful to ourselves as others are taken.
3 people like this
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
2 Nov 20
The thing is though, if we are learning from our own intuition, it means that part of us knows it already, so what is the point of us just relearning what we already know already?
Maybe the endless journey of life is all just one big beat-up, a waste of time, to entertain the Gods with.
And so, in this case, life long learning is neither here, nor there, as it is really more about bringing unconscious knowing to the fore.
This is done merely as a depositionary stance to give us something to occupy us with in life, but all of consciousness is just a meaningless pool of contempt, and God never needs it, and really, neither do we either.
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
2 Nov 20
@Shiva49 If we go back 6 billion years, where were we then?
Fast forward 6 billion years again, where will we be then?
We place ourselves on life's pedestal, whereas really we are just a flea on an elephant.
Performer's for the God's, watching the fleas dance?
And what was God doing for all of those years too, that he only got active enough to create man, not that long ago?
But, you are right, if we cannot find some meaning to any of this, we are more or less lost causes, before we ever start.
Perhaps we were all in some other dimension for billions of years, before this brief window opened and we got booted into this world, for some reason of God's, maybe one of discipline, so that we might learn to tow the line, once more again...lol...
@Shiva49 (26681)
• Singapore
2 Nov 20
@innertalks How I feel about life in general is we have inner knowing and intuition.
Then we go through this physical world in the present body form.
The mind and body come into play and test our inner knowing and intuition.
How we course through and match the inner knowing with the demands of the body and mind is the learning curve here.
So our life here has meaning too and test our mettle.
It need not be a struggle though we need to dodge some bullets along the way.
We are often thrown challenges but there are always solutions in them.
And as we tend to believe, this is not the end of the world but if it is so, then life here takes another dimension.
2 people like this
@crossbones27 (49463)
• Mojave, California
2 Nov 20
You always blow my mind.Am I a rock ?
I try to live zen , but not good at it.
I try to live zen , but not good at it.2 people like this
@crossbones27 (49463)
• Mojave, California
2 Nov 20
@innertalks I do say Let learning come to me,as universe seems to give us what we need, but not what we want. It is a interesting philosophy.It definitely goes against grain of how most teach, which is go take it if you want it, but maybe where I am messing this whole zen thing up.
2 people like this
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
2 Nov 20
@crossbones27 Yes, we should let everything come in its own time.
Any force is never Zen, and yet Zen is the only real "force" too.
Zen loves things coming into play at the exact right time, without any interference from anything.
And that will usually always happen in the end, one way or another, anyway.
Zen is the only winner, but Zen was never competing.
We compete with Zen in vain, at our own peril (sometimes) too!
@innertalks (21916)
• Australia
2 Nov 20
In essence, life is as useful to a rock as it is to us, or to God.
What is usefulness?
We fool ourselves by our thinking that our lives here are of any real use to anything at all.
It's all just a waste of time, and the rock enjoys its life as much as anything else does, God included.
Zen is the same now and Zen. Nothing changes. Change is just an illusion.
There is nothing to learn. It is all known at some level.
Why waste our time learning?
Let learning come as it may, without our forcing it to come. It is what it is.
Zen zens it all to Zen.
Zen is always just Zen. Zen never learns Zen. Zen just is Zen
2 people like this
