Nothing to Hide
(This is a completed article from a long-forgotten draft that has existed from April 2024)
Spring is almost here, and walking in a park close to my house, I can smell the scent of flowers beginning to bloom. There are several stories telling that ancient practitioners had a profound realization into the truth of our reality by a casual encounter with flowers, and the Koan to be presented in this blog post is one of those stories, based on a dialogue between a Confucian monk and a Zen monk, where they talk a small talk about the smell of fragrant olive.
One day, a Zen master tells a Confucian monk that there is one common Truth that Confucians and Buddhists share. The monk doesn’t know what it is, and asks the master to tell it to him. The master, as irrelevant as it may sound, asks the monk if he can smell the scent of the fragrant olive that was filling the air at that time. As the monk affirms it, the master replied, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
A lot of spiritual practitioners seem to be trying to find Truth somewhere else, be it at the end of their practice that seems so far away, or be it in the teachings of a certain guru, a teacher, or a master. When one starts looking for Truth “out there,” it happens that they are one step away from the very thing that they are looking for, as Truth can never be anywhere other than “here and now (that old adage we’ve heard a thousand times … )”. At the same time, when one doesn’t intend to look for it, nothing will happen (and it is great that nothing happens, as long as you have seen Truth by yourself!).
This is such a fundamental paradox of spiritual seeking that there seems to be no definitive solution to it. The good news is there, though, when you reverse the way you see the situation - Truth is already here when you stop seeking it. So, the whole point about this issue is HOW TO STOP SEEKING. And to stop seeking, one has to seek to the bone, to the death.
Sounds ridiculous? It may be. But this is the spirit of what is called the “great doubt” in Zen. If one doubts, or seeks halfheartedly, that won’t make much of a difference; but when it is done wholeheartedly … lo and behold! This single-minded doubt, or seeking, burns anything other than itself up and there is just this single doubt burning. This is where you have to look! What is it? What is THIS? What is this thing that is here and now? They’ve got nothing to hide …
When you go out for a walk, you could smell a fragrant scent of a flower, and just ask what that is. Tons of thoughts trying to explain it may appear, but keep asking the single question of “What is this?” Then, see for yourself, and you’ll also see that they haven’t goy anything to hide, from the very beginning.