A Western Zen Retreat Interview

Teacher: Tell me who you are?
Participant: I am the answer.
Teacher: What is the question?
Participant: Moment to moment.
Teacher: What do you feel?

Participant: Space with no boundary or pressure. (THIS SPACE DID NOT FEEL VAST OR LARGE OR IN ANY WAY OVERWHELMING, YET ONE SENSED IT HAD NO END, WAS TIMELESS, AND HAD EXISTED BEFORE THE BIG BANG, WHICH WAS EXTENDING INTO IT.)

Teacher: What do you hear?
Participant: Silence.
Teacher: Can you hear the stream outside?

Participant: No. Just silence, but perhaps the occasional tick from somewhere in another room. (THIS SILENCE WAS PALPABLE, LIKE A CLEAR FOG FLOWING FROM MY RIGHT SIDE, AS IF ENTERING FROM SOME OTHER PLACE WHERE IT HAD ALWAYS BEEN. THIS SILENCE WAS OLDER THAN TIME, HAD EXISTED BEFORE THE BIG BANG: IN SOME PLACE, THIN ENDURING SILENCE AND AS A DOOR OPENED INTO THIS SILENCE IT WOULD WELL OUT AND OVER ALL WHO LISTENED)

Teacher: What has become of the question?
Participant: It has fallen away. Ceased to be.
Teacher: Now all you need to do is wait.
Participant: To quote T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets, 'East Coker'.

I said to my soul, be still,
Wait without hope,
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing:
Wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing:
There is yet faith.
But the faith and the love and the hope
Are all in the waiting.

Teacher: Yes, wait.