Zen has no business with ideas.

Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.

Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.

A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment - the Zen sense oof the alone.

Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.

You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.

The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.