Case 46 Proceed On from the Top of the Pole                          
 
Sekisõ Oshõ asked, "How can you proceed on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole?"
Another eminent teacher of old said, "You, who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole, although you have entered the Way you are not yet genuine.
Proceed on from the top of the pole, and you will show your whole body in the ten directions."
 
Mumon's Comment
If you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master.
But even so, tell me, how will you go on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Eh?"
 
Mumon's Verse 
 He darkens the third eye of insight
 And clings to the first mark on the scale.
 Even though he may sacrifice his life,
 He is only a blind man leading the blind.
 

          Top of a 100 foot pole, are you there?  Sometimes I think this Zen practice is not only like climbing to the top of a 100' pole but the pole is also greased  and I keep sliding backwards.  I have been playing a lot of music these days now that I have retired from regular work.  I have been practicing one song quite a bit and the other day during my evening sit I could not get that tune out of my head for the whole hour.  It's ok but I have worked all these years on training this (my) mind to be quiet.  And then my wife is adept at showing me where I am still attached.
           If you get to the top of the pole and truly quiet your mind then just sit there for a while, relax, look around, the path on is clear.  Your whole body fills the ten directions.  Do you see that?  All that work for such a simple insight but still it is a revolution.
          The last of the Ox Herding Pictures shows a joyous Bodhisattva giving out gifts to children.  All your years of hard work are not for your ego bound small self.  That self is just an illusion and by now you know that.  The outcome of all the hard work is that now you partake in the activity of the Universal Bodhisattva which is really your true self.    

Case 45 Hõen's "Who Is He?"                  
 
Hõen of Tõzan said, "Even Shakya and Maitreya are servants of another.
I want to ask you, who is he?"
 
Mumon's Comment
If you can really see this "another" with perfect clarity, it is like encountering your own father at a crossroads. Why should you ask whether you recognize him or not?
 
Mumon's Verse 
     Don't draw another's bow,
     Don't ride another's horse,
     Don't discuss another's faults,
     Don't explore another's affairs.

          I shouldn't write or say anything about this koan or for that matter any koan.  You either understand or you don't.  You have either put in the untold hours of of zazen or you haven't.  You have either experienced samdhi or you haven't.  This "another", this master of Shakya and Maitreya is not something you can grasp intellectually with words and yet you know it contains and is the master of all the gods and buddhas.  This is not about faith, no it is something that we can perceive.  At times we personify it like in this koan but it is not an individual being.  We can call it Being itself or Buddha or the Man of No Rank, or even God but these are just names.  Names can carry us into the realm of duality and fill us with ideas.  It is better not to give it a name, but if we are clear eyed and not filled with thoughts then we can perceive this master which is everything and no-thing.
          One of the fallacies that we humans fall into is the idea of free will.  It goes with the idea of an individual being.  But in truth none of us are in charge, it is just another idea.  The complexities of cause and effect are beyond grasping.  Nothing happens independent of everything else because there is no everything else, there is only this master.  "In all of heaven and earth there is only One and it is I." 
 

Case 43 Shuzan's Shippei              
 
Shuzan Oshõ held up his shippei [staff of office] before his disciples and said, "You monks! If you call this a shippei, you oppose its reality.
If you do not call it a shippei, you ignore the fact.
Tell me, you monks, what will you call it?"
 
Mumon's Comment
If you call it a shippei, you oppose its reality.
If you do not call it a shippei, you ignore the fact.
Words are not available; silence is not available.
Now, tell me quickly, what is it?
 
Mumon's Verse 
      Holding up the shippei,
     He takes life, he gives life.
     Opposing and ignoring interweave.
     Even Buddhas and patriarchs beg for their lives.
 
          For those of you who have never seen a shippei it is a carved stick about 2 feet long. Sometimes it has horse hair at one end.  Typically a Zen Master will hold his shippie, dressed in full regalia, while doing sanzen with his students.  I don't have a shippei because I am a lay teacher and not a priest.  In the old days and maybe still in Japan today the shippei would be  occasionally used to hit a student to shock him out of conventional thought.  The only time I ever saw the shippei used was Sasaki Roshi using it to test the depth of my samadhi.  All he did was drop it and watch my reaction to the sound.
          Again Shuzan Osho is using his shippei to test the samadhi of his students.  If  a student gets caught thinking and thus come out of samadhi or was never in samadhi he/she will give some stupid answer that will never satisfy Shuzan but if he remains in samadhi some spontanious action will manifest.  The student might grab the shippei and try to break it or maybe let out a great shout, who knows.  But whatever the student does he or she will be having great fun.

Case 42 The Girl Comes out of Samadhi                       
 
Once, in the old days, in the time of the World-honored One, Manjusri went to the assembly of the Buddhas and found that everyone had departed to his original dwelling place.
Only a girl remained, sitting in samadhi close to the Buddha's throne.
Manjusri asked Shakyamuni Buddha, "Why can the girl get near the Buddha's throne, while I cannot?"
Shakyamuni Buddha said, "Bring her out of her samadhi and ask her yourself
Manjusri walked around the girl three times, snapped his fingers once, took her to the Brahma heaven, and exerted all his miraculous powers to bring her out of her meditation, but in vain.
 
The World-honored One said, "Even a hundred thousand Manjusris cannot make her wake up.
But down below, past twelve hundred million lands as innumerable as the sands of Ganges, there is a Bodhisattva Mõmyo
He will be able to rouse her from her samadhi."
Instantly the Bodhisattva Mõmyõ emerged from the earth and made a bow to the World-honored One, who gave him his imperial order
The Bodhisattva went over to the girl and snapped his fingers once
At this she came out of her samadhi.
 
Mumon's Comment
Old Shakyamuni put a petty drama on the stage and failed to enlighten the masses.
I want to ask you: Manjusri is the teacher of the Seven Buddhas; why couldn't he arouse the girl from her samadhi?
How was it that Mõmyõ, a Bodhisattva at the beginner's stage, could do it?
If you understand this intimately, you will enjoy Nagya's grand samadhi in the busiest activity of consciousness.
 
Mumon's Verse 
 One was successful, the other was not;
 Both secured freedom of mind.
 One in a god-mask, the other in a devil-mask;
 Even in defeat, a beautiful performance.

          A magical tale in the language of the inconceivable.  But still it must mean something, it must refernce some experience of the advanced practitioner who has worked their way through most of the Mumonkan.  First we must understand the story.  A girl deep in samadhi cannot be roused by Manjusri the Bodhisattva of wisdom, one of the most advanced Bodhisattvas an enlightened being.  But Monyo a Bodhisattva not from the heavenly realms but rather from the dark places deep within the Earth wakes her from her samadhi.  
          There are two questions that we answer with this koan.  For the advanced practitioner what is the nature of samadhi?  The second question is how do we interact with the world with this samadhi?  For years we work very hard to first learn to go into samadhi and then make samadhi part of everyday life.  At first we experience small bits of samadhi but it has no stability.  But then as we experience samadhi more and more it develops stability but it also changes.  The shift into samadhi stops being dramatic and we find ourselves in samadhi naturally.  Samadhi becomes not something that happens just on the cushion but a way of interacting with the world both on and off the cushion and the samadhi on and off the cushion can be different.  On the cushion absolute samadhi is absolutely quiet without discrimination but it is also  without heart.  That won't work off the cushion.  To function in the world we need to be able to think and more then just think we need to function with heart and still be in samadhi.  This is different then the way most people function.  Most of us are caught in our small world of I and our minds are running without discipline filled with ego based thoughts and ego based emotions.  In active samadhi we function with the wisdom of no self, without attachment to ego based thought or emotion, but still deeply felt with love and compassion and thought directed to the activity at hand.
          Why would Manjusri take a disciplined meditator out of absolute samadhi?  Manjusri lives in the heavenly realm of absolute samadhi.  Monyo on the other hand, from the earthly realm, knows suffering well.  We practitioners of Zen should not hide within our meditation but instead use the power of meditation to engage the suffering of the world.  But, be careful don't get caught by this suffering.  Don't return to that world of judgement of and attachment to right and wrong.  Stay within the world of non-duality and no-self even as you function within duality.  If you can do this you will always be in samadhi.

Case 41 Bodhidharma's Mind-Pacifying                         
Bodhidharma sat facing the wall.


The Second Patriarch stood in the snow.

He cut off his arm and presented it to Bodhidharma, crying, "My mind has no peace as yet! I beg you, master, please pacify my mind!"

"Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you," replied Bodhidharma.

"I have searched for my mind, and I cannot find it," said the Second Patriarch.

"Now your mind is pacified," said Bodhidharma.
 
Mumon's Comment

The broken-toothed old Hindu came so importantly, thousands of miles over the sea.

This was raising waves where there was no wind.

In his last years he induced enlightenment in his disciple, who, to make matters worse, was defective in the six roots.

Why, Shasanro did not know for ideographs.
 
Mumon's Verse 
     Coming east, directly pointing,
     You entrusted the Dharma, and trouble arose;
     The clamor of the monasteries
     Is all because of you.
 
          This is a classic Zen story about the Enlightenment of Huike the second Zen Patriarch.  It is told in reduced form in this koan because it is expected that every Zen student already knows the story.  Here is the story in a little more detail.  

          Bodhidharma comes from India about 550CE.    At that time in China Buddhism existed as a religion but only through translations of Sutras.  Consequently it was more a religion of doctrine, philosophy and study then the practice of meditation.  Bodhidharma was the first lineage Buddhist teacher to come from India and the Buddhism he brought emphasized meditation practice and having that same enlightenment experience as the Buddha had.  Bodhidharma set himself up in a cave on a mountain in Northern China and had very few students, one of them was Huike.
          The story is that Huike was already a monk and had an earnest desire for enlightenment.  He seems to have been deeply suffering if he was willing to cut off his arm to get Bodhidarma's attention.  I am not sure this part of the story is actually true but it does point to the commitment one must have if one is to follow this practice all the way to enlightenment.  Once he has Bodhidharma's attention he asks.  "Please pacify my mind."

​Bodhidharma responds, "Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you."

Huike responds,  "I have searched for my mind, and I cannot find it."

This is interesting because Huike would not have responded this way unless he had been practicing meditation  for many years.  I don't think Huike gave this response immediately but rather this is like being given a koan.  It can take years to properly respond.  Huike was probably sent off to meditate after being asked the question.  When he fimally gives this response that he cannot find his mind it is because he has pealed away all the layers of his thought and there is just quiet, there is nothing there.  But still this experience has not quite sunk in.  It takes Bodhidharma to point out that this finding nothing is just the point, and then Huike has that deep experience of insight that transforms everything.
          The enlightenment experience has two sides.  One side of the experience is samadhi,  the other side is insight that results from samadhi.  One cannot happen without the other.  Huineng the 6th Patriarch refused to separate the two but the fact is that samadhi usually precedes insight.  There are many different types of samadhi.  Normally samadhi is defined as meditative absorption but actually samadhi is a normal state of mind that we commonly experience playing music or sports or doing art or anything that naturally absorbs us, our random thoughts quiet, and we are fully concentrated on the subject at hand.  "Fully engaged mind and body" this is how Dogen Zenji described samadhi and this is the practice of Zen whether on the cushion or off.  Samadhi on the cushion can also take a variety of forms.  We can become absorbed in the breath or listening or posture, etc, any one of the many objects of meditative concentration. And then there is the samadhi where the mind is just plain quiet without any particular object of meditative concentration.  We are not in true samadhi until all random thought stops and the mind is fully quiet and this is much more difficult then one of the many forms of natural active samadhi.  Put me in skis going down a mountain at 30mi/hr and I will instantly be in samadhi and it has been that way since I was a teen.  But it took me 7-8 years of daily meditation practice and several sesshins before I first experienced samadhi on the cushion.  Samadhi on the cushion is different.  It is different because because the mind is not so deeply engaged that there is not room for insight.  Koans are meant to pull us out of samadhi for just a moment to spark insight.  And what is that most important insight? 
"I have searched for my mind, and I cannot find it," said the Second Patriarch.
"Now your mind is pacified," said Bodhidharma.

          The insight is simple,  when we quiet our mind we discover that there is nothing there.  The Buddha said that we have no Atman (soul).  In the Mahayana we use the term emptiness to describe the insight or we might just say there is no self.   But this simple insight changes everything.  Before our whole way of thinking was built on the idea of an individual self.  Now our whole way of thinking is going to build on the insight that there is no individual self.

A note:  I changed the translation that I pulled off the internet from,
"I have searched for my mind and I cannot take hold of it",  to
"I have searched for my mind and I cannot find it."  The reason I made the change is not only that other translations correspond to my change, which they do, but that the original translation does not properly give the insight.  The first translation is the insight of a beginning meditator.  For the beginning meditator it is quickly obvious that the stream of thought which passes through consciousness, and we might think of as our mind, cannot be grasped.  Some might also say that our awareness/consciousness is our mind and it cannot also be grasped.  This seems a deeper insight but it is not enough.  To experience that it all disappears in truly deep meditation is the basis for insight that this koan is trying to express.  As I always do in this blog I am trying to push the reader to work hard and deepen your meditation.
          

Case 40 Tipping Over a Water Bottle                 
 
When Isan Oshõ was with Hyakujõ, he was tenzo [典座 head cook] of the monastery.
Hyakujõ wanted to choose a master for Mount Tai-i, so he called together all the monks and told them that anyone who could answer his question in an outstanding manner would be chosen.
Then he took a water bottle and stood it on the floor, and said, "You may not call this a water bottle. What do you call it?"
The head monk said, "It cannot be called a stump."
Hyakujõ asked Isan his opinion.
Isan tipped over the water bottle with his feet and went out.
Hyakujõ laughed and said, "The head monk loses."
And Isan was named as the founder of the new monastery.
 
Mumon's Comment
Isan displayed great spirit in his action, but he could not cut himself free from Hyakujõ's apron strings. He preferred the heavier task to lighter one.
Why was he like that, eh?
He took off his headband to bear the iron yoke.

Mumon's Verse
     Tossing bamboo baskets and ladles away
     He made a glorious dash and swept all before him.
     Hyakujõ's barrier cannot stop his advance;
    Thousands of Buddhas come forth from the tips of his feet.
 
          True Story:  Here in the USA a Zen Master is paired with a Tibetan Buddhist teacher for a public talk/debate.  The Zen Master holds up an orange and says "What is it?"  The Tibetan fellow looks at he Zen Master incredulously and says, "Don't they have Oranges where you are from?"  The Zen Master breaks out laughing.

          Straight ahead runs the Way.  Don't be thrown by ridiculous questions.  Recognize that they are ridiculous and act appropriately.  The head monk is caught.  He thinks he should say something profound but then nothing profound comes to his head.  His answer is truly lame. He could of said "I don't see a thing," referencing his understanding of Emptiness.  He could of said "All the Universe is contained in that bottle," showing his understanding of interdependence and non-duality.  They would have been better answers but still Isan's answer would of won.  He wasn't interested in profound thoughts he had better things to do. 


          I am not saying there is no profundity in Zen.  Deep meditation opens the door to profundity but in the practice of non- attachment we have to learn to let go even of those deep thoughts, if we are to continue to deepen meditation and then bring that quiet mind into our daily lives.

          All koans are context driven and the most obvious interpretation may be misleading.  We might think from this koan that Zen is simply anti-intellectual as we might think several koans are anti-intellectual.  But here we are in the late stages of this Koan collection.  Like Isan who was an advance monk  if you have gotten this far then it is time to drop even the profundity and come back to simply functioning but now with a difference.  All that profundity just sits in the background.  It is not that it has gone away but it is no longer something that needs to be thought about but has simply become part of who you are.  
          Years of meditation and deep meditative experience gives one a clear mind.  This clear mind sees the world exactly as it is without overlaying  layers of thought.  Some would say this is the essence and final outcome of meditation practice.  But who is to say what a clear mind is?  Most people already think they know what a clear mind is.  The other day I loaned a friend a sutra titled by the translator Journey to Reality.  My friend looked at the title and said, "Isn't this all reality as it is."  Though my response was, "Just read the book," I didn't contradict him but our normal view of reality like that of clarity is not the same for one who who has deep experience in meditation.  And the deep clarity of one who is well practiced in meditation is different from what we normally think of as clarity.  It includes both the mundane and the profound,  the mind is quiet and deeply knowing at the same time. 






























Mumon's Verse 頌曰
颺下笊籬并木杓            Tossing bamboo baskets and ladles away,
當陽一突絶周遮    He made a glorious dash and swept all before him.
百丈重關欄不住    Hyakujõ's barrier cannot stop his advance;
脚尖□出佛如麻    Thousands of Buddhas come forth from the tips of his feet.
 

Case 39 A Mistake in Speaking               
 
A monk said to Unmon, "The brilliance of the Buddha silently illuminates the whole universe. . ."
But before the could finish the verse, Unmon said, "Aren't those the words of Chõetsu the Genius?"
"Yes, they are," answered the monk.
"You have slipped up in your speaking," Unmon said.
Afterward, Shishin Zenji brought up the matter and said, "Tell me, at what point did the monk err in his speaking?"
 
Mumon's Comment
If you clearly understand this and realize how exacting Unmon was in his method, and what made the monk err in his speaking, you are qualified to be a teacher of heaven and earth.
If you are not yet clear about it, you are far from saving yourself.
 
Mumon's Verse 
     A line cast in the rapids,
     The greedy will be caught.
     Before you start to open your mouth,
     Your life is already lost!
 

          This short exchange between Ummon and a monk is the type of exchange that is typical in Sanzen which in the Rinzai Zen tradition of koan practice is usually a short meeting where the student presents an answer to the koan he/she is studding and the teacher gives a short response guiding the student in his/her practice.  With some teachers these exchanges are so short that the teacher will do sanzen with each student several times a day during a retreat with as many as 40 students.  Sasaki Roshi was like that.  Some times the student would enter the room and before he could finish his bows Sasaki would ring his bells sending the student away calling for the next student. This never happened to me but as a student I would try out all sorts of answers in trying to answer my first koans which were all quickly rejected until they were not.  As a student one has all sorts of ideas how to answer a koan.  Usually a student thinks that if he/she just thinks through the koan clearly he /she will be able to give a proper answer.  Yes of course the student must understand the question the koan is asking but thinking alone will not give the answer.  Often a student will give some verbal expression of what they think is the deepest understanding of the koan by quoting something out of classic Zen literature.  That is what this monk has done and we see it was quickly rejected.  There are two things that strike me as wrong, from a teacher's perspective, with what the monk said.  One, he is quoting someone else.  This is wisdom borrowed from some one else not the monks own expression.  It has been said that that all the past sayings of all the great Zen Masters are all just a bunch of crap.  They are all digested and second hand.  Not fresh, not personal, not being experienced NOW!  The other thing wrong with what the student said is that it was an idea and not an expression again of what the student was experiencing in NOW.
          Many years ago during one sesshin with Sasaki Roshi I passed several koans.  I was sitting very deeply and out of that deep sitting the answers came quickly and naturally.  But then at the next several sesshins I could not pass any new koans.  I could not even pass the koans I had previously pass.  Why?  Sure I was filled with new Buddhist wisdom but it was all just intellectual.  I knew why I wasn't passing any more koans.  I was not sitting deeply enough to pass any koans.  

Case 38 A Buffalo Passes the Window                      

Goso said, "A buffalo passes by the window. His head, horns, and four legs all go past. But why can't the tail pass too?"
 
Mumon's Comment

If you make a complete about-face, open your eye, and give a turning word on this point, you will be able to repay the four kinds of love that have favored you and help the sentient beings in the three realms who follow you.

If you are still unable to do this, return to this tail and reflect upon it, and then for the first time you will realize something.
 
Mumon's Verse 
         Passing by, it falls into a ditch;
         Coming back, all the worse, it is lost.
         This tiny little tail,
         What a strange thing it is!
 

          To understand this koan we have to start by understanding exactly what it is asking.  Start with the metaphor of the Buffalo.  The Buffalo or Ox has been a common metaphor in Zen for centuries used to describe the various stages of the practitioner's development along the path.  Many series of drawings with a boy and a Buffalo have been drawn to represent the stages of Zen development. http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mzb/oxherd.htm  
          There are two ways that we can interpret the metaphor of the Ox.  There is the before enlightenment interpretation where the Ox represents our individual mind and the stages of our development start with our learning to become mindful of our mind.  Then we progress by learning to control and purify the mind and then eventually with a purified mind we can forget our self conscious efforts at training and then completely forget the self and enter into samadhi.  This samadhi experience also called Kensho or Satori is the essence of the enlightenment experience but a single experience does not make enlightenment.  True enlightenment comes from continued training that saturates one so deeply that it becomes part of everyday life.  So now the Ox or Buffalo represents not just our ever changing samsaric mind as we work to purify it but our True Self which we must experience again and again.  Now what does the Buffalo passing through the window represent?  Might the window represent the gateless gate and the Buffalo passing by the window our experience of kensho?  But still something is missing, there is no tail.  Does the tail represent our failure to completely let go?  Harada once told me that life was too short to completely purify the mind.  Even with a deep experience of kensho and them more experiences we still find ourselves at times caught in our ego bound individual perspective.  So we let go, and let go and let go again and again.

          More then just not being ever fully able to purify ourselves of ego we also need to recognize the deep mystery that we will never fully be able to clarify.  Dogen writes in the Genjo Koan:

When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.
 
​What is missing?  Well just about everything is missing, so much is a mystery that we ever grab just a little bit of the Truth.  Through our practice we might have realization after realization.  For those who have deep experience in zazen then our practice touches a never ending well of realization.  But we can never drink all the water in the well.  The water comes from a deeper source that we cannot even touch.  It is like this, What is the source of our realization?  Why has the Universe manifested in the self conscious form of a human being?  Why can this form become Self conscious?  When we intuit the Non-Dual then we understand that all dualistic explanation is incomplete. To open our eyes to the mystery is to open our eyes to the cosmic.  Every drop of water of water reflects the whole Universe because it is not  separate from the whole Universe.  Like wise we cannot be separated from the whole Universe which is our True Self.  Dogen continues:
  
 For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. 
Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.
 
All this writing about the mystery is a little bit beside the point because if you stop your thoughts and open your eyes and ears then all around is the mystery.  In the silence we intuit it but as soon as we open our mouths or try to explain it in writing the intuition is gone.  Like all Zen koans this koan is not about any specific understanding but rather about entering that place beyond dualistic understanding.

Case 37 Jõshû's Oak Tree                           
 
A monk asked Jõshû, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China?"
Jõshû said, "The oak tree in the garden."
 
Mumon's Comment

If you understand Jõshû's answer intimately, there is no Shakya before you, no Maitreya to come.
 
Mumon's Verse 
​
      Words cannot express things;
      Speech does not convey the spirit.
      Swayed by words, one is lost;
      Blocked by phrases, one is belwildered.
 
  

          This is one of  many koans where a deep profound question is is answered with a seemingly mundane and simple answer.  This is not a simple koan.  There is a reason it is near the end of this koan collection.  If you truly come to understand this answer your dharma eye is fully open.
          In ancient China when a person asked the question what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China, he was in fact asking what is the deepest truth of Buddhism?  Such a simple answer as " the oak tree in the garden" often encourages a simple interpretation of Zen such as there is not much to Zen accept the simple living of our prosaic lives, "carry water chop wood."  Maybe if I can only reduce my desires and calm my mind through meditation I can be happy simply living.  There is something to be said for this position and this is the goal of many meditators.  But this is only a partial understanding which has little to do with the deep understanding of the Buddhas enlightenment.  When the dharma eye is open the profound appears within the mundane.
          I was educated as a physicist many years ago.  For a while I taught high school level physics.  The understanding of physics is also of a hidden understanding underlying the prosaic world.  It is an understanding slowly pieced together over many centuries by dedicated individuals through reason and experiment.  It tells of a world of atoms and smaller, forces, fields, and energy, space and time, that exists within and around everything we see.  It is a hidden reality, but if we are educated in this reality then it can come alive even in  everyday observation.
          The Buddha lived in a time before science but still he was an explorer into the profound mysteries of our existence.  His tool was zazen and his method was to strip perception of all preconceived concepts and then view the world clearly for what it is.  His discovery was anything but mundane.  The Buddha couched his discovery in terms of how to be happy and this is usually how Buddhism is approached.  He preached the Four Noble Truths: 1,  Life contains much suffering;  2, There is a reason why we suffer; 3, There is a state of mind and a way of viewing life without suffering;  4,  There is the Eight Fold Path that leads to a life without suffering.  Most of us emphasize in our practice and understanding Truths 2 and 4.  We learn that suffering is caused by ego and desire and we try to eliminate ego and desire through practicing the eight fold path.  We might think that the Third Noble Truth is simply a state without desire and ego but that is not quite it.  The Buddha talked about everything being in constant change.  He talked about how the temporary appearance of things resulted from cause and effect and lastly he said that we as humans have no atman (soul) which is somehow beyond the every changing and causal nature of reality.   We humans are thoroughly natural creatures without even a little bit that is divine (unless you expand the meaning of the word divine).  And like everything else being under constant change it is hard to say that we even exist except as a fleeting form.  In that sense we are empty of permanent reality as is everything else.  These ideas are fine and may be even perfectly acceptable to you but they are not yet experiential.  They are not yet life changing nor will they make you particularly happy.  The key is in the idea of no atman.  Even if we totally accept the idea of our total naturalness we find ourselves still attached to our own individuality,  we still see the world as a multitude of individual things.  We do not yet understand the third noble truth.  This is where meditation comes in.
          I have met two people who have had spontaneous enlightenment experiences which they described the same way as a prolonged period without any internal dialogue while awake.  In both cases it caused a massive perceptual shift and effected them so deeply that they went in search of some way to understand what happened to them.  In both cases they came to Zen and meditation because they recognized their experiences as being akin to the descriptions of the enlightenment experience in Zen literature.  I have also had this experience but it was not spontaneous.  It was the result  of years of meditation practice, both a daily practice and several times a year doing intensive retreats.  And because for me it resulted from meditation, now  through many years of meditation I have been able not only to repeat the experience but it is now available to me to some degree all the time.  I can sit in meditation and experience prolonged periods of quiet or I can take a few breaths give my stomach a squeeze and lift the chi from my hara ( The hara is the energy center located just below the navel.) and my mind will quiet  and the perceptual shift will take place.  But it is not really me the individual Ed who is doing this or having this experience. It is not my mind that  becomes quiet because in that perceptual shift we experience the world without individuality and yet the individual does not disappear.  Emptiness within form, the Universal within the individual, non-duality within duality, the oak tree in the garden becomes the whole universe, it is the True Self.
          One time at sesshin Harada Roshi tells us, "If you can just stop thinking for 30 seconds it will change your life."  later in the sesshin - I suspect he was frustrated with us -  he tells us that 15 seconds without thought will change our lives.  It is always a powerful experience for the mind to quiet but to stop thinking for 15 or 30 seconds is just the beginning.  Just as likely as not there might not be any huge transformation of thought with a single experience of no thought but if we return to this place again and again then undoubtedly there will be a huge transformation in the way we think and understand the world.  And then this perceptual shift is available whenever thought stops.