The Masters of Zen rarely discoursed. Discoursing they regarded as one
of the obstacles to enlightenment, for it encouraged and developed the
wrong kind of thinking - that 'mentation' or 'intellection' which
affirms our false identification with a fictitious ego.
'The ignorant are delighted with discoursing,' the Lankavatara Sutra
states, 'discoursing is a source of suffering in the triple world.' We
would not doubt it; yes, indeed, but when the Lanka says that
discoursing is a source of suffering it means more particularly that
it is a hindrance to the removal of ignorance, and so perpetuates our
normal state of suffering.
But, nowadays, what was meant by discoursing is chiefly represented by
books. In books, as conventionally and commercially produced today, no
idea can be conveyed in less than about ten thousand words - with
apologies for not making it a hundred thousand, in which form it would
have been much 'better'. No chance for anyone to think except the author!
Yet, when ideas are buried in a haystack of verbiage, who remembers
them, and, conversely, when ideas are concisely expressed, who pays
any attention to them? The most vital statements of the sages and
prophets, even of the Buddha and Jesus, are not taken seriously -
presumably because they are not served up in a sauce that conceals
their flavor and substitutes its own.
Instead of apologizing for not burying their ideas even more deeply in
verbiage would not modern authors do better to apologize whenever they
are unable to express an idea more concisely than in, say, one
thousand words? Ideas may vary in the amount of expression they need,
for many a hundred words should be ample. After all, the more fully
ex-pressed the less juice there remains in them, the more complete the
exposition the more dead they are on delivery; ideas mummified in
words are only museum specimens.
The ideas of the Masters, expressed in half a dozen words, are still
alive after centuries, but they are fingers pointing to intuitional
understanding, not fossilized examples of intellection.
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