"He said, 'The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.'

"The statement is clear; linguistically there is no problem, there is nothing to be understood in it. Suzuki is saying, 'I have never talked about it because I have never had it.' Now I will have to give you the whole background, the climate in which the meaning of the same sentence turns into exactly its opposite as you understand it.

"Zen has an absolute certainty that no one can have satori or enlightenment; you can have things. You can have money, you can have power, you can have the whole world, but you cannot have enlightenment.

"Enlightenment is not a thing; it is not possible to possess it. Those who say they have it, don't have it – they don't even understand the abc of it. One becomes enlightened – that's what Suzuki is saying. There is no distinction between I and enlightenment, so how can I have it? The I disappears completely into enlightenment just like a dewdrop disappearing in the ocean. Can the dewdrop say, 'I have the ocean'? The dewdrop is the ocean – there is no question of having it. This is the first thing to be clearly understood.

"Suzuki was an enlightened master; that's why he denied it. If he were not enlightened, but was only a scholar, learned about Zen, he might have felt very embarrassed to deny it. He might rather have lied, and nobody would have been able to detect his lie. He could have said, 'I have it, but the experience is inexpressible; it was so simple, that's why I never talk about it.' But the man really had it. To really have it means you can't have it; you disappear.

"As long as you are, there is no enlightenment.

"The moment there is enlightenment, you are not.

"You disappear just like darkness disappears when there is light. Darkness cannot possess light; you cannot possess enlightenment.

"I don't think that the statement of Suzuki would have been understood by the people who asked the question and who received the right answer. It needs a totally different context to understand."