“Isn’t the birds’ way the same as one’s original nature?”
Tozan said, “O monk, why do you get everything upside-down?”
The monk asked, “What is this place where people get things upside-down?”
Tozan said, “If there were no topsy-turviness how could a servant become a lord?”

The mind is a servant and it has become the master. It is perfectly good as a mechanical computer, a biological miracle, but it is not the master. You have completely forgotten the master, and the servant has become the master in its absence.

Be awake to the beyond, to the within.

Get out of your mind to see who you are, what is your space without mind. And suddenly you will know how you have lived up to now in a topsy-turviness. The master is almost absent and the servant has become the lord.

The monk asked, “What is our original nature?”
Tozan answered, “Not taking the way of the birds.”

Tozan is a great master. When he saw that the monk is mediocre and would not understand immediately, without bringing mind in – would not see directly – he changed his statement out of compassion.

The monk could not understand what is “the way of the birds.”

Tozan answered…

contradicting himself

“Not taking the way of the birds.”

If you cannot understand the greatest insight directly, then you have to go from the ABC of religiousness. Zen is XYZ.

When a monk asked Kassan, “What is the way?” he answered, “The sun overflows our eyes; for ten thousand leagues not a cloud hangs in the sky.”

This is the way – just spaciousness, nothing clouding your consciousness, no anger, no greed. no ego; just a pure, innocent being.

“What is the real form of the universe?” asked the monk.
“The fishes at play in the clear-flowing water make their mistakes,” replied Kassan.