"Shoitsu is right that in this category, the uppermost category, there are no further techniques. It is not a question of technique, it is a question of love, of trust. Trust is not a technique, love is not a technique. It is not something that you use, that you do, it is something that happens to you. Suddenly you see the master and your heart starts dancing and rejoicing, knowing that you have found. There is no doubt in it, no question in it; it is just like falling in love. You can define trust as rising in love because falling in love is going down – it is biological. Rising in love is going upwards – it is your spiritual principle.

"No meaning of principle, no teaching; verbal understanding is impossible. The phenomenon is so great – the transmission of the lamp from heart to heart, from being to being – that no word is big enough to contain it or even to indicate towards it. Nothing is said but something tremendously important happens; it is spontaneous.

"The best disciple receives the light without words – just by opening himself, holding nothing back.

If you take it up directly at this, then there is no difference from 'The cypress in the garden,' 'Three pounds of hemp,' 'Swallow the water of the West River in one gulp.'

"These are traditional answers given by different masters when they were asked, 'What is the buddha?' And it is absolutely impossible for people who are not acquainted with the Zen tradition to understand it. If you ask a master, 'What is the buddha?' he points you to the cypress tree in the garden and says, 'That is the buddha.' Now it is so illogical, apparently irrational…or he says, 'Three pounds of hemp – that is the buddha.'

"In this category, any kind of answer is possible, because in this category it is understood that the whole cosmos is the buddha. So anything belonging to the cosmos – whether it is a cypress tree, or a rosebush, or a lotus flower, it does not matter. Every stone on the path is nothing else but a buddha, because the buddha becomes now the very fabric of the whole existence."