Logic

[Kristopher]

~

When the fruit ripens it falls on the ground.

When life is ready, it takes another form than the one it has so far been assuming.

When spring comes, the field is green and we feel relaxed; when frost covers it, we shiver and see the trees all shorn of leaves.

It is not that we have logic first and apply it to nature to make the latter obey its laws.

Logic is a later product, and it is we who have constructed it. Where logic is not available, we must construct another which is “logical.”

Essential Zen is prior to logic so called, and its masters are guiding us to an interview with a God who has not yet uttered “Let there be light.”

[Kristopher]

“What is the most miraculous event in the world?” “I sit here all by myself.”

The philosopher according to whom cogito ergo sum is generally weak-minded. The Zen master has nothing to do with such dialectical quibbles; he straightway gives his final irrevocable pronunciamento: “I sit here all by myself!”

He does not “think”; he is, in fact, where the thinking has not yet started.

If he begins to do it, he is too late. Therefore, he goes straight to “I am,” or just “am” or “is.” The Zen master is a most impatient man; he will not wait for us to ask a question for he says: “If you want to be intimate [with Reality] no questions need be asked, for the answer is where they have not yet been raised.”

“A flash of lightning” or “the spark of flint striking steel” does not necessarily mean instantaneity but im-mediacy. When you ask a question or when you think at all, this means mediation or time. Zen abhors mediation of any kind; it is always straightforward and wants to handle Reality in its nakedness or in its isness or suchness.

Questioning and answering, or thinking or logicizing, is mediation and therefore takes time, which irritates the Zen master, who is always after im-mediacy. He does not want a pair of tongs to grasp the fire, he wants us to grasp it with the naked hands, and the wonderful thing is that when grasped it does not burn the hands. This is the meaning of the saying: “Whoever loses his life will preserve it.”