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Tokusan, a scholar of Buddhism of some renown, was studying Zen under the teacher Ryutan. One night he came to Ryutan and asked many questions. The teacher said: ‘The night is getting old. Why don’t you retire?’
So Tokusan bowed and opened the screen to go out, observing: ‘It is very dark outside.’
Ryutan offered Tokusan a lighted candle to find his way. Just as Tokusan received it, Ryutan blew the candle out. At that exact moment the mind of Tokusan was opened. In other words, he experienced enlightenment. That is, he woke up, and for the very first time he saw things as they really were. He came to know truth.
Tokusan knew much. He had studied long and hard. Yet, in that ever-so-brief moment of enlightenment in the form of a direct, immediate and intuitive experience of truth, Tokusan came to see that everything that he had learned in books and by listening to others had done him no good at all.
It is said that the next day Tokusan burned all his books, scholarly notes and commentaries. He declared, ‘In comparison to this awareness, all the most profound teachings are like a single hair in vast space. However deep the complicated knowledge of the world, compared to this enlightenment it is like one drop of water in the ocean.’
Tokusan realized his mistake. He had been seeking wisdom ‘without’ instead of ‘within.’
We need no candle or lamp to guide our path except that inner light that says to us, if we will but listen attentively and quietly, ‘This is the way … .’
The ‘way’ is the way things are, the way things unfold from one moment to the next, and our task is simply to observe with choiceless awareness, that is, to stay awake. We rely far too much on the advice and supposed wisdom of others, and on so-called ‘book knowledge.’ We buy self-help books and attend self-improvement courses, we consult gurus and priests, and we follow ‘holy ones’ or just plain others, but we fail to do the one thing—the only thing—that can lead us through and out of the darkness. Yes, we fail to … look within.
One of the many things I like about Buddhism is that its essential ‘message’ is that we must be our own teacher, saviour, and disciple. No one outside of us can save us from ourselves. No one can find truth for us. No one—no earthly person, god, or demi-god— can be truth for us. Truth just is, and our task is to see things as they really are as they unfold unceasingly from one moment to the next. That is why truth is dynamic and not static. It is forever new and fresh.
The light shines from within, so let that light shine. Do not depend upon any light shining from without to guide you through life. So, blow out that candle of yours—now!
