showing his "inness" and "isness".

To break out of this circle is what Zen is all about -- not to go on moving in your mind
through words and concepts but to drop into existence itself.

A great Zen Master, Nanin, was cutting a tree in the forest. And a professor of a
university came to see him. Naturally the professor thought that this woodcutter must
know where Nanin lived in the hills, so he enquired. The woodcutter took his axe in his
hand and said, 'I had to pay very much for it.'
The professor had not enquired about his axe. He was enquiring where Nanin lived; he
was enquiring if he would be in the temple if he went there. And Nanin raised the axe and
said, 'Look, I had to pay very much for it.' The professor felt a little puzzled and before he
could escape, Nanin came even closer and put his axe just on the head of the professor.
The professor started trembling and Nanin said, 'It is really sharp.' And the professor
escaped.
Later on, when he reached the temple he came to know that the woodcutter was nobody
but Nanin himself. Then he enquired, 'Is he mad?'
'No,' the disciple said. 'You had asked if Nanin was in and he was saying yes. He was
showing his "inness" and "isness". That moment he was a woodcutter; that moment, axe
in his hand, he was totally absorbed in the sharpness of the axe. He was that sharpness in

that moment. He was saying "I am in" by being so immediate, by being so totally in the

present. You missed the point. He was showing you the quality of Zen.'

Zen is non-conceptual, non-intellectual. It is the only religion in the world which

preaches immediacy; moment to moment immediacy; to be present in the moment, no

past, no future.

But people have lived with theologies. And those theologies keep them childish, they

don't allow them to grow. You cannot grow by being confined in a theology, by being a

Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or even a Buddhist. You cannot grow; you don't

have space enough to grow. You are confined very much, in a very narrow space; you are

imprisoned.