The master looked at him long, long enough. The disciple started getting restless. He again repeated, he said, “Why are you looking at me so long? Why don’t you answer me?”

And the master answered a really Zen answer. He said, “Kill me.”

The disciple could not believe that this is the answer for his enlightenment. He went to ask the chief disciple. The chief disciple laughed and he said, “He did the same to me also. And he is right. He is saying, ‘Why do you go on asking me? Drop this master. Drop this asking. Kill me. Drop all ideology. Who am I? I am not preventing you. Life is available. Why don’t you start living? Why do you go on preparing, when and how?’”

This seems to be the most difficult thing for the human mind – just to live, naked; just to live without any arrangements; just to live the raw and the wild life; just to live the moment. And this is the whole teaching of all the great teachers, but you go on making philosophies out of them. Then you create a doctrine, and then you start believing in the doctrine.

There are many Zen people who believe in Zen – and Zen teaches trust, not belief. There are many people around me who believe in me – and I teach you trust, not belief. If you trust your life, you have trusted me. No intellectual belief is needed.

Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don’t ask about the path.

In Franz Kafka there is a parable; it looks like Zen, almost Zen. Kafka says, “I was staying in a strange town. I was a new arrival there, and I had to catch the train early in the morning. But when I got up and looked at my watch, I was already late so I started running. When I came to the tower and looked at the tower-clock I became even more afraid that I would miss the train, because my watch was late, itself. So I started running, not knowing the path, not knowing the way, and the streets were clean and deserted ( early in the morning, a cold winter morning ( and I couldn’t see anybody.

Then suddenly I saw a policeman. Hope came into me. I went to the policeman and I asked about the way, and the policeman said, “The way? Why are you asking me?”

And I said to him, “I am a stranger in this town and I don’t know the way, that’s why. Please show me the way, and don’t waste time – I am already late and I will miss the train, and it is important to catch the train.”

And the policeman laughed and he said, “Who can show the way to anybody else?”

The policeman said this, and he waved a hand and moved away smiling.”

Here ends the parable. It looks exactly Zen. In the West they think this is surrealistic, absurd. It is not. Of course from a policeman it looks more absurd than from a Zen master, but sometimes policemen can be Zen masters.