Zen koan: What is the one element that solves every koan? (A fiction story piece)

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The Zen master, Artlo Lokesky, gave this koan to his best student to work on. When the sky is cloudy, why is your mind still clear? When your mind is cloudy, why is your life full of rain? The student replied, "We rain down pain on our own lives, but God only rains down his love onto us. God, like the sun, exists, behind every cloud." "Yes," said the master. "We need to pierce the clouds of our wrong thinking to let that sun shine through." "As the American rapper, singer, and songwriter, Lupe Fiasco said:" "'What starts in clouded minds finishes in the rain.'" "To live a productive life takes effort." "Now, the opposite of effort is laziness." "Laziness can come about by our distraction to other things instead of to the main thing that our effort should be directed to, or by procrastination, which amounts to being a form of distraction too, in its way." "Procrastination is more a lack of energy to move in the direction of where our effort should be placed, where as distraction, can be more placing our effort into something non-essential to where our real effort should rather be placed." "Laziness can come about as a result of our disposition, lack of motivation, or from our depressed state of mind too." "Depression, at its basest level, is a form of laziness too." "You gave me a good answer, but just the same, go and meditate on this koan some more, and give me your new answer to this koan tomorrow." The student did so. The next day he answered his master like this: "A clear mind comes not from a cloudy sky, nor from itself being cloudy, but more from your heart living from the effort of living from the love that has been placed within it." "Good, good," said the master. "Every right answer to every koan, always should mention love within it to be correct." "Your two answers to me both mentioned love. You have done well, and you gave me good answers, both times." Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The Zen master was already old, but nothing stopped him from giving of himself fully, from love, to his students.