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There is a story about a Zen monk that is cooking in the kitchen and the master comes in and says to him, “Go to my room and look just above my desk, in the tokonoma.” The student has just recently cleaned the master’s room, and thinks he must have left something amiss.
So he runs to the room and searches the whole room very carefully, to see what is wrong. But he can’t find any dust or even a drop of water left over from the cleaning. So he runs back to the teacher and says, “Roshi. What did I do wrong? It seems perfectly fine to me. I’ve checked it out very carefully. Your room is clean.”
And the master says, “No, you fool. I picked a flower this morning and put it in the tokonoma. I wanted you to see the flower. It’s so beautiful. Did you notice the flower?” And the student says, “No, I didn’t see any flower. I was looking for what was wrong.”
We are so busy, looking for and then correcting, what isn’t even wrong, that it is very difficult for us to see what is right in front of us. We often see something wrong and think, “I’m seeing what is.” But is this seeing what is?
Grandmaster Nagual Three Toes