Without Words, Without Silence

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Case 24 of the Gateless Gate is always instructive for us. In Senzaki's concise version, a monk asks Fuketsu:

"Without speaking, without silence,
how can you express the truth?"

Fuketsu observed,

"I always remember springtime in southern China.
The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers."

Like many koans, this approaches a key issue in Zen. How do we express the truth? Words? Silence? Neither are acceptable as both are prone to spin and distortion, neither is the truth, just a representation of perception.

Fuketsu answers weakly, though he is pointing us in a direction. His answer is weak because it is a copy of something he has heard, an old Chinese poem. A better answer, if he were in the outhouse, would have been a fart.
The truth is what we are just now. The truth is not our words, not our silence, but our manifestation of ourselves.

If Fuketsu were amid those birds, and they were chirping, his answer would be exactly on point. Today, we are so often off point, as we speak from history, conceptualization, prognostication: from everywhere but here.

What is Buddha? My coffee is cold.

Be well.