“It goes without saying that Zen is neither psychology nor philosophy, but that it is an experience charged with deep meaning and laden with living, exalting contents. The experience is final and its own authority. It is the ultimate truth, not born of relative knowledge, that gives full satisfaction to all human wants.”—Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Zen Koan as a means of Attaining Enlightenment

I had left the book in a truck months and months ago and was only  handed it back yesterday.

“I saw the ‘Zen’ and figured it was your’s,” said a buddy.

“Thanks,” I replied, “you figured right.”

I thumbed open a page and that was the first thing I came across. That’s what happens when you flip through the pages written by certain souls, giants of the spirit as I often refer to them. Sparkling gems appear, every word a blossoming flower throwing off vibrant colour and light.

Why do we spend our time with the drabs? Why do we go to school and harness ourselves to the draft horses of “knowledge”?

Of course, we are forced to, if we hope for any sort of remunerable employment that is. At too young an age we forego what Suzuki refers to as ‘ultimate truth’ for the eminently practical authority of ‘relative knowledge’. And pay a heavy price in the process. ‘Full satisfaction to all [our] human wants’ eludes us.

‘The experience is final and its own authority.’  I like that. No proofs, no syllogisms, no explanations. It simply is.

Simple.