No Water No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening
and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
Since the bamboo strip was weakening
and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
Go where your faith takes you. Be where you want to be. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21).
Ultimately, it all boils down to one thing — the old pail. Human ego. It is painful to break your ego, but it is the path to immense freedom. Like a caterpillar you crawl out of your cocoon and fly out a butterfly. If you find the vessel more important than its bearer, you are bound to misdirect your energies. This temple or that shrine, this guru or that master, makes no difference in the final analysis. Eventually, you must lead a responsible life to walk any path — spiritual, material or both.
The laws of nature are the same for everyone. No guru, no matter how you see him or her, can pluck a mango from an apple tree if you see what I mean. Your own life is the greatest miracle, you are a miracle. Just like a honeybee takes the pollen from a real flower and goes back to its hive, feel free to take wisdom from wherever you get, regardless of its religious or ethnic source, and deposit it in your own repository of knowledge. There is no harm in taking learning from any source you so fancy.
A sense of individual existence you carry in your mind is as temporary as the reflection of the moon in your vessel. One ripple in life, one tiny shake, and the whole image gets distorted. Just like the real moon is not an object that can be held in a pail, the real you can’t be held down by a guru or a belief (read religion). It’s when you limit your own infinite existence to a small receptacle that the reflection starts to feel the real thing.
You break the vessel and all that you are holding within you pours out. In that state you go beyond even emptiness. There is no pail and there’s no water. You are free. Individual consciousness, expanding beyond infinity, merges in the cosmic consciousness then.
No water. No moon.
Or no water, no moon. It’s how you look at it.
Om Namah Shivay
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