I have said many times that my function is to take away from you all that you don’t have, and to give you all that you already have. Just a thin layer of unconsciousness is covering your treasures. But because the mind becomes worried about its emptiness, its ignorance, naturally it starts seeking and searching somewhere to be somebody. But it can never be somebody. Just behind it, it is already a god, already a buddha, already the awakened one. It is a very strange situation that the emperor is so much surrounded by beggars that slowly, slowly you only know the beggars and you can’t see the emperor behind them.

It’s the imponderable, the incalculable, where there’s no way to apply intelligence or cleverness.

My difficulty with Ta Hui is that I can seen he is simply repeating like a parrot. He himself does not understand what he is saying. He is intelligent enough to grasp the words spoken by the awakened ones, and his memory is good – he can repeat them. But I don’t feel at all that he understands what he is saying.

Haven’t you read of old Shakyamuni at the assembly of the lotus of the true dharma? Three times Sariputta earnestly entreated him to preach, but there was simply no way for him to begin. Afterwards, using all his power, he managed to say that this dharma is not something that can be understood by thought or discrimination. This was old Shakyamuni taking this matter to its ultimate conclusion, opening the gateway of expedient means as a starting point for the teaching of the true nature of reality.

Even when he relates an incident of tremendous importance like this…Every year Gautam Buddha used to have a special assembly called the lotus assembly of the authentic religion. This was a special occasion, when all the wandering monks would gather together, thousands of monks.

In one assembly this incident really happened.

Sariputta was one of his most intimate disciples, and Sariputta was the head of the lotus assembly. He asked Gautam – entreated him three times – to preach, but Gautam Buddha remained silent. Ta Hui has not understood that silence is his preaching.

It was an assembly of people who could understand why he remains silent. Buddha had said all that was needed to be said: Become silent and you will know it. He did not say it, because by saying it, it is defiled, contaminated; he was simply showing it by his own silence. And certainly when Buddha was utterly silent with his eyes closed, the whole assembly became as if there was nobody – a ‘pin drop’ silence.

Sariputta asked again and again, and Buddha remained silent. In fact, he had preached, he had given the golden key; he had blessed the whole assembly by his silence.