Where there is carrion lying, meat-eating birds circle and descend. Life and death are two. The living attack the dead, to their own profit. The dead lose nothing by it. They gain too, by being disposed of. Or they seem to, if you must think in terms of gain and loss. Do you then approach the study of Zen with the idea that there is something to be gained by it? This question is not intended as an implicit accusation. But it is, nevertheless, a serious question. Where there is a lot of fuss about "spirituality," "enlightenment" or just "turning on," it is often because there are buzzards hovering around a corpse. This hovering, this circling, this descending, this celebration of victory, are not what is meant by the Study of Zen- even though they may be a highly useful exercise in other contexts. And they enrich the birds of appetite.

Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing," the "no-body" that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.

Zen and the Birds Appetite
Thomas Merton

Tung-shan Liang-chieh's Enlightenment

38th ancestor of the Soto Zen Tradition (Master Tung-shan) told Yun-yen, "I still have some habits that are not yet exhausted."

Yun-yen asked, "What have you done so far?"

The master said, "I haven't even done the [four] holy truths."

Yun-yen asked, "Are you happy or not?"

The master said, "I'm happy. It's like finding a bright pearl in a trash heap."

He asked Yun-yen, "What should I do when I want to meet [my original] Self?"

[Yun-yenl said, "Ask the interpreter." The master said, "I'm asking right now."

[Yun-yen] asked, "What is he telling you?"

When the master was leaving Yun-yen, he asked, "After you die, if someone asks me, 'What was the master's truth?' What should I say?"

Yun-yen paused and then said, "Just this, this."

The master was silent for awhile.

Yun-yen said, "You must be extremely careful and thorough in realizing this thing."

The master still had some doubts.

Later, he was crossing a stream and saw his reflection. As a result, he was greatly awakened to the prior instruction. He said in a verse,

Avoid seeking Him in someone else
Or you will be far apart from the Self.
Solitary now am I, and independent,
But I meet Him everywhere.
He now is surely me,
But I am not Him.
Understanding it in this way,
You will directly be one with thusness.

The record of TRANSMITTING the LIGHT
Zen Master Keizan's Denkoroku
trans. Francis H. Cook

My casting fell into the hypnotic rhythm I'd been after at Hat Creek, obliterating consciousness, and I had one of those rare moments of epiphany that come when you're entirely open to them. I lost any sense of the McCloud as a specific river. It began to recapitulate every other river I'd fished, to exist briefly as an absolute form. The water stopped being merely water and became instead an adjunct of my body, so that I was joined to it in a steady flow. The moment didn't last very long, but that was all right. That was fine.

Bill Barich
"Hat Creek and the McCloud"
from Traveling Light