My New Mantra Whack! Whack!— The paddle cracked down on my shoulder as I nodded to sleep in my first Zen sesshin in 1971 at the filled Harvard gym. Some two hundred have gathered here to meditate and clear their mind in six hours. Zen Master of Rochester Philip Kapleau asked the crowd— "How many of you are seeking enlightenment?" All hands went up in the gym including mine— quite a wonderland sight to see. Kapleau shook his head— you know what Picasso said on this— "I do not seek— I find." Whoa! Whoa!— My mind leaped— No wonder we're not enlightened— hopping from guru to guru, searching sacred texts for clues, chanting "Om"s and getting nowhere! From then on— Picasso's words became my new manta— fly with his bird "Peace Dove" to find treasure-trouves in my protein structure research. And I was the first to find helix, sheet, and reverse-turn potentials of amino acids in proteins and predict their structures without computers. The pain from those Zen stick whacks have long faded away, but what the Zen Master said that day remains— Picasso's "I do not seek— I find."   Peter Y. Chou   Mountain View, 3-31-2019

Zen Stick Used at Zen Sesshin Philip Kapleau Zen Master of Rochester Graham Sutherland Meets Picasso (11-20-1947) who said: "I do not seek. I find." Poland 487: Picasso Dove (issued 11-13-1950)