5. Before And After

There is a beautiful Zen saying, 'Before enlightenment, a mountain was mountain, a river was river, a forest was forest. When you start seeking, when you start searching, a mountain is not a mountain, a river is not a river, a forest is not a forest. Everything is chaos. When you achieve what you are seeking – enlightenment - again, a mountain is a mountain, a river is a river, a forest is a forest.' It is very difficult to understand this statement. What they mean is, before you started seeking and after you achieved enlightenment, things are clear. But during the process of seeking itself, things are not clear. Although before seeking and after enlightenment, things appear to be clear, the clarity before seeking is not the same clarity as after enlightenment. Before seeking, the clarity that you have can be confused very easily by anything! It is not the ultimate clarity. It is just a vague idea. But after enlightenment, the clarity that you get cannot be confused by anything. It is the ultimate truth as it is. That is the difference. The clarity that cannot be confused by anything is the clarity of enlightenment. After enlightenment, the very frequency of seeing things will be totally different. So although a mountain is a mountain, a river is a river, and a forest is a forest, the very frequency of seeing will be completely different. During seeking, since it is a transformational process, things will only be in confusion! Don't bother much about it.