Soen-sa said, “Very good! You shouldn’t use words. So if someone asks you, "What is Buddha?" what would be a good answer?”

She was silent.

Soen-sa said, “Now you ask me.”

“What is Buddha?”

Soen-sa hit the floor.

She laughed.

Soen-sa said, “Now I ask you, ‘What is Buddha?’”

She hit the floor.

“What is God?”

She hit the floor.

“What is your mother?”

She hit the floor.

“What are you?”

She hit the floor.

“Very good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.”

She smiled.

Soen-sa said, “Do you have any more questions?”

“You still haven’t told me where Katz went.”

Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes and said, “You already understand.”

She said, “Oh!” and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.

Soen-sa said, “Very, very good! That is how you should answer any question. That is the truth.”

She bowed and left. As she was opening the door, she turned to Soen-sa and said, “Master, but I’m not going to answer that way when I’m in school. I’m going to give regular answers!”

Soen-sa laughed.

This is a deeper communion than can be possible between two minds.

The child understands in a very different way. First, the child has no knowledge. When there is no knowledge, when you know that you don’t know, there is opening. When you know you know, you are closed.

When a child asks a question it is really out of his ignorance; when a grown-up asks a question it is out of his knowledge. The question may be formulated in the same way, but the quality of the question is utterly different. When a child asks, there is purity. He does not know, that’s why he is asking. When a grown-up asks he knows, he already knows. The question is out of his knowledge.