Do You Know Who You Are?

DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?

Room 2 was packed at Stanford's
History Corner for the lecture
"From No-Self to Liberation:
The Paradoxiccal Wisdom of Emptiness"
by Jian Hu, Zen Master from Sunnyvale.

He asked the audience:
"Do you know who you are?"
When no one raised their hand,
he said: "160 people in this room—
and nobody knows who they are?"

I wanted to say "I know!"
but humility refrained me,
and that night the same scene
reappeared in my dream
and this time I said "Yes!"

The Zen Master pointed at me
"Tell us then who you are?"
So I replied: "I'm a tiny empty vessel
where the Great Spirit flows through."

Jian Hu asked "What is that Great Spirit?"
I said: "It's the mind that asks the question,
the same mind that gives the answer—

It's the bloom of the rose in spring
the warmth of sunshine in summer
the fall of leaves in autumn
the whosh of the wind in winter

It's the laughter of the child
the passion of youth
the sigh of the aged
the wisdom of the sage

It's the music of this waking world
the watercolors of our dreams
the golden silence of deep sleep
the Pure Consciousness behind it all."

"So you're a poet" the Zen Master smiled
"And so are we all" I replied,
"when we become the empty vessel
where the Great Spirit flows through"

The audience's clapping woke me up
but I didn't rush to transcribe
the dream on paper, for every word
was still singing like a bird in my heart.

— Peter Y. Chou
Mountain View, 11-22-2004

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