The old Zen story goes something like this: Zen master and a student were walking through the forest, when they noticed ducks flying overhead.
“What do you see?” The Zen master asked the student.
“Ducks,” the student replied.
“Where did they go?” Asked the Zen master.
“They flew away,” the student replied.
The Zen master grabbed the student’s nose and twisted it, and while the student screamed in pain, the Zen master said, “When did the ducks fly away?”
One interpretation of this Zen koan is that there is no individual duck in Reality, only collective “ducks” exist, and one duck is no different from another; And they have never flown away, they always have been.
The student could only see the ducks within the framework of existence and time, while the Zen master could see their eternal nature. . . therefore, they could never fly. The part that the student thought flew away is the individual part that we see when we separate ourselves from the rest of humanity.
The student, in her mind, struggled with the duality of existence; I’m here now, but someday I’ll be dead and go away, and then what? Whereas the Zen master sees no endings or beginnings, only the constant flow of existence in time, a flow that is irrelevant. Nothing really matters or changes, although within the limited vision of the student, everything is constantly changing.
This ongoing struggle and conflict for the student is the basis of the student’s suffering and confusion of life that prohibits the freedom that exists beyond his structured thinking. However, you cannot break the patterns you have formed from your experience; she cannot escape her prison. If he could, he would make sure the ducks could never fly.
Likewise, we also imprison ourselves. For us, death is the total end of everything we love and fear death. Our religions are of little help, and even with tremendous faith, we still feel uncomfortable leaving all that we have accumulated behind; our relationships, our accomplishments, and our property, but we can’t take any of this with us, and we see ourselves as individuals, facing this end-of-life predicament alone.
This is a terrible misunderstanding. We are never an individual, except in basic conventional terms that allow us to function within existence, but when we pass existence and enter the true Reality that is the basis of all existence, there is no differentiation, we are all truly one. We can experience this reality; It is not difficult to do, just drop everything that seems important to you. It is not that you leave your family, but that you renounce your attachment to them and embrace them with a real love that encompasses all of humanity.
Be wary of insurance policies, beliefs, and religions that guarantee our separate little selves a survival after death, and instead have the courage to look in another direction. Break the void of loss of worldly activities and enter a world that cannot be imagined: that of true Reality. All that we are and all that we have will disappear when death separates our illusions from this Reality, and if we can distance ourselves from our attachments before this happens, before recycling, then we will not have to return to these same types of attachments. attachments in another life; we will be free to continue.
The Zen master, simply put, was trying to tell his student about these things, but the student wasn’t ready to listen yet. She had not emptied her mind of all the confusion and illusions that kept her in an uproar, she had not yet discovered true meditation, where the student was no longer a student, but was merely a duck, who could never fly. . . .