Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-...garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The President has apples on the table And barefoot servants round him, who adjust... The curtains to a metaphysical t And the banners of the nation flutter, burst On the flag-poles in a red-blue dazzle, whack At the halyards.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »