Question: What is meditation in emptiness?

Answer: One observes things in the phenomenal world, yet always dwells in emptiness. That is meditation in emptiness.

Question: How can one dwell in dharma?

Answer: One should stay neither in in-dwelling dharma nor in non-dwelling dharma. He should live naturally in dharma. This is what you call dwelling in dharma.

Question: How can a man live as not-man and a woman as not-woman?

Answer: There is no difference in buddha-nature between a man and a woman, nor an entity designated as man or woman. Physical matter produces the grass and trees as it does human beings. In comparison you say “grass” or “trees.” You give all sorts of names to your illusions. Buddha said, “If one sees that everything exists as an illusion, he can live in a higher sphere than ordinary man.”

Question: If one attains the nirvana of an arhat, has he Zen realization?

Answer: He is just dreaming and so are you.

Question: If one practices the six paramitas, and passes through the ten stages of bodhisattvahood, and completes ten thousand virtues, he should know that all things are not born, therefore, they are not going to perish. Such realization is neither intuition nor intellectuality. He has nothing to receive and there is nothing to receive him. Has this man Zen realization?

Answer: He is just dreaming and so are you.

Question: If a man has ten powers, and accomplishes four forms of fearlessness, and completes eighteen systems of the teaching, he is the same as buddha who attained enlightenment under the pippala tree. He can save sentient beings and then enter into nirvana. Is he not a real buddha?

Answer: He is just dreaming and so are you.

The most important question that man has ever encountered is “What is meditation?” The English word meditation is not so pregnant with meaning as the original Sanskrit word dhyana is.

“Meditation” has a wrong connotation. The moment you say meditation, immediately the idea arises “On what?” Meditation, in the English sense of the word, is always on some object. But in the Sanskrit sense of the word dhyana, there is no object as such. On the contrary, to be absolutely objectless, to be utterly empty of all content is dhyana.