Ummon picked up his staff, and, showing it to the assembled monks, said, “My staff has turned into a dragon and swallowed up the whole world. Where are the poor mountains and rivers and great earth now?”

His meaning is that if you can realize a non-judgmental clarity, even this simple staff becomes your greatest meditation. And in that meditation the oceans will disappear and the mountains will disappear, because in that meditation you will disappear. The observer suddenly becomes the observed.

Yuishen, another master, wrote in praise:

Why, it is but the motion of eyes and brows!
And here I have been seeking it far and wide.
Awakened at last, I find the moon
Above the pines, the river surging high.

The river is the river, the pines are the pines, and the moon is the moon. All that is needed is a clarity of vision, not that stupid mind that goes on continuously making judgments.

Makusho wrote:

Loving old priceless things,
I have scorned those seeking
Truth outside themselves:
Here, on the tip of the nose.

The whole truth is here, just on the tip of your nose. One simply needs clarity of vision. It is not far away, it is not even near – it is just your very existence, it is your heartbeat.

Issa wrote:

Buddha law,
shining
in leaf dew.

If you have the clarity, then just in the early morning sun, when the dewdrop shines like a pearl on the lotus leaf, you have seen the whole teaching of the Buddha.

But your eyes have to be unclouded. Thoughts are your clouds. Meditation is nothing but brushing away your thoughts, keeping your consciousness clean and reflective.

Maneesha has asked: