' You do not see the moon '...

A Zen poem says, "After the wind stops I see a flower falling.

Because of the singing bird I find the mountain calmness."

Before something happens in the realm of calmness, we do not feel the calmness; only when something happens within it do we find the calmness.

There is a Japanese saying, "For the moon; there is the cloud..

For the flower there is the wind."

When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is.

But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else.

When you are doing zazen, you are within the complete calmness of your mind; you do not feel anything.

You just sit.

But the calmness of your sitting will encourage you in your everyday life....

Even though you do not feel anything when you sit, if you do not have this zazen experience, you cannot find anything; you just find weeds, or trees, or clouds in your daily life; you do not see the moon.


--Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind