An excerpt from his "Eighty Four Thousand Poems" book.
It is impossible to express the ultimate truth.
It is like a taste. If you have tasted, you know
If you have not tasted
There is no way to convey it.
A man who has not tasted honey cannot be made
To know what sweetness is.
The man who has never seen light is incapable
Of understanding anything said about light.
The person who has known and experienced
Even he finds it almost impossible to express it
Because language falls very short.
The experience is so vast
And language is so small.
The experience is so sacred
And language is so mundane
That there is no possibility of any bridging.
Hence truth has been known many times
And all those who have known
Have tried to express it
But they have all failed.
We are grateful that they tried
Because out of that effort life has been enriched.
We have beautiful scriptures: the sayings of
Zarathustra, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha
Are so beautiful, so precious
That without them there would
Have been no humanity
We would have been utterly poor.
But howsoever beautiful they are
They have not been able to express it.
And they all say that they have failed.
They have tried with their heart
They have tried in thousands of ways
In every possible way.
Buddha spoke for forty-two years continuously
But again and again the same cul-de-sac.
Something seems to be elusive, it escapes.
Just this morning
I was reading a Zen master, Sotoba.
The day he experienced truth
The day he became enlightened
He wrote these beautiful lines:
'The mountain -- Buddha's body
The torrent -- his preaching.
Last night, eighty-four thousand poems.
How, how make them understand?'
The experience is so vast
As if eighty-four thousand poems
Have suddenly arisen in you.
And you cannot express even a single poem!
He says, 'How, how make them understand?
Every awakened person has felt
A tremendous compassion for people
And he has tried his best.
But something in the very experience
Is such that it cannot be expressed.
If one wants to know it
One has to experience it.
Truth can only be an experience.
It is like a taste. If you have tasted, you know
If you have not tasted
There is no way to convey it.
A man who has not tasted honey cannot be made
To know what sweetness is.
The man who has never seen light is incapable
Of understanding anything said about light.
The person who has known and experienced
Even he finds it almost impossible to express it
Because language falls very short.
The experience is so vast
And language is so small.
The experience is so sacred
And language is so mundane
That there is no possibility of any bridging.
Hence truth has been known many times
And all those who have known
Have tried to express it
But they have all failed.
We are grateful that they tried
Because out of that effort life has been enriched.
We have beautiful scriptures: the sayings of
Zarathustra, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha
Are so beautiful, so precious
That without them there would
Have been no humanity
We would have been utterly poor.
But howsoever beautiful they are
They have not been able to express it.
And they all say that they have failed.
They have tried with their heart
They have tried in thousands of ways
In every possible way.
Buddha spoke for forty-two years continuously
But again and again the same cul-de-sac.
Something seems to be elusive, it escapes.
Just this morning
I was reading a Zen master, Sotoba.
The day he experienced truth
The day he became enlightened
He wrote these beautiful lines:
'The mountain -- Buddha's body
The torrent -- his preaching.
Last night, eighty-four thousand poems.
How, how make them understand?'
The experience is so vast
As if eighty-four thousand poems
Have suddenly arisen in you.
And you cannot express even a single poem!
He says, 'How, how make them understand?
Every awakened person has felt
A tremendous compassion for people
And he has tried his best.
But something in the very experience
Is such that it cannot be expressed.
If one wants to know it
One has to experience it.
Truth can only be an experience.
