not search but a new way of looking at things

I HAVE SEEN THE SUN RISING IN THE EVENING,

and since then I have been drunk with that which is.

You can call it God, you can call it

NIRVANA, you can call it any name -- it does not matter.

Whether you give it a name or you don't give it, it remains the same.

A rose is a rose is a rose. But one thing is certain about

it: that the sun rises in the evening.

The apparent is not real; the real is just the opposite of the apparent. It is obvious that the sun rises in the morning.

To deny the apparent and the obvious I say that I have seen the sun rising in the evening. The experience of the Buddhas contradicts the experience of everyone else.

It is not common; it is unique, it is extraordinary.

Ordinarily, whatsoever we have become accustomed to know is just a mind game, because we look at that which is with loaded eyes.

Our mirrors are covered with great dust; they have become incapable of reflecting the real. The real is not far away, the real surrounds you. You are part of it, it is part of you. You are not separate> from it, you have never been separate from it.

You cannot be separate from it -- there is no way to be> separate from it, it is impossible to be separate from it. But still, the dust-covered mirror is incapable of reflecting it. Once the> dust disappears, you will be surprised that all that you have been

seeking was not needed to be sought at all, because you had it already.

The spiritual search is as illusory as any other search.

The search itself is illusory because it has taken one thing for granted:

that something is missing. And nothing is missing!

Once you> take it for granted that something is missing you start looking for it;

then you go on looking for it in all directions.

And the more you search the more you will miss it, because the more you search the more dust-covered becomes the mirror. The more you travel to seek it, the farther and farther you go in search of it, the more and more frustrated yo become. Slowly slowly you start thinking that it is so far away...'That's why I am not reaching it.'

The reality is just the opposite: you are not reaching it because you are it.

It is not far away, it is so close by that even to call it 'close' is not right,

because even closeness> is a kind of distance. It is not distant at all, it breathes> in you. It is not 'there', it is here. It is not 'then', it is> now. It has always been with you. From the very beginning everyone is a Buddha, everyone is a mirror capable of reflecting.

This is the basic message of Zen -- and the greatest message that has ever been delivered to man, and the greatest liberating force that has ever been brought to the earth. But you will have to look in a totally new way.

All that is needed is not search but a new way of looking at things. The common, the ordinary, the usual way has to be dropped. Hence I say the sun rises in the> evening. By what name you call it does not matter a bit because it is wordless, it is wordlessness, it is utter silence.

It is unchanging, unmoving; it is eternal, it is timeless.