"To anybody who does not understand the language of Zen it will all look like nonsense, but it is more than any sense can contain. It is certainly beyond the so-called sense, it is certainly not common sense – it is very uncommon.

"The monk has asked Seppo, the master, 'How about when the old valley water is a cold spring, when the valley water becomes just solid ice?'

"Seppo lived near a spring. Seppo answered, 'Stare into it…'

"Remember the words:

'Stare into it as you may, you can't see the bottom!'

"On the surface, to intellectuals, it may seem irrelevant to the question. It is not. Seppo is saying, 'Stare deeply. However deeply you stare into a solid spring, you cannot see its bottom.' The same is your own situation: stare into yourself, you can go deeper and deeper, but you cannot find the bottom. Your depth is infinite.

The monk said, 'What about when we drink the water?'

"He cannot understand what the master is saying. He is still struggling with his question about drinking water when the spring becomes frozen.

Seppo said, 'It does not go in the mouth.'

"Ordinarily it will seem as if he is answering the monk and saying to him that, 'When the spring becomes solid, ice, you cannot drink from it, it does not go in the mouth.' But that is not his meaning. He is saying: truth does not come from outside, it is already within you. It may be spring or it may be summer, it doesn't matter.

The monk went to Joshu, another master, and said what had been discussed.
Joshu said, 'If it won't go in the mouth, it won't go through the nostrils.''

"Why have you come here? You have been answered. You are still seeking outside; your question is pointing like an arrow from something outside – and you are the one who is holding the arrow, you are the very target. Just try to understand that by changing the master nothing is changed.

'If it won't go in the mouth, it won't go through the nostrils.'
The monk then asked, 'How about when the old valley water is a cold spring?'

"