On first entering Nansen’s monastery, Joshu was made to serve in the kitchen as the stoker. One day he closed all the doors and piled wood on the fire until the whole kitchen was filled with smoke. Then he shouted, “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”
When the whole community had flocked to the door, he said, “I will not open the door unless you can say the right word.” No answer came from the crowd. But Nansen silently passed the key through a window hole. This was the right word that Joshu had in mind, and he opened the door immediately.

Maneesha, Joshu is a very rare case. Joshu had become a priest when he was still a child and experienced his first satori when he was seventeen. He said of this experience: “Suddenly, I was ruined and homeless.”

This statement, after having the first glimpse of enlightenment, is of tremendous significance. He says, “Suddenly I was ruined. Whatever I was before, is all ruined. I was not that. I had cultivated a personality, a mind, a heart – nothing of that was me. The satori left me suddenly ruined and homeless. The home that I had made for myself according to the rules of the society, amongst the crowd, a cozy place…enlightenment, just the first glimpse of it, has taken away all. I am standing alone, homeless, shattered, ruined.”

But this is only one part of the experience. The other part, he is not saying. The other part cannot be said. Only those who enter the experience know the other part.

The first part can be said: that the old is gone. We all know the old, but the new we don’t know. So when the new comes, it brings a problem: you can say what has been ruined, what has been shattered, what has been taken away, but you cannot say what have you got. On that point there is utter silence.

That’s why he is talking about only one part of it, the first part. The second part has to be experienced. The second part is finding your real home. The second part is finding your original face. The second part is finding your eternity. But these are mere words if not experienced. Experienced, they are the only true realities.

Everything depends on experience. Zen is experiential. It is not a talk about great things, it is not a philosophy. It is a very simple and obvious phenomenon – just to look in. What can be more simple? As you look in, a totally new world opens its doors and your old language becomes irrelevant. All that you can say is, the old is finished.

The new is discontinuous with the old. Neither the language nor any gesture, nothing can manage the new in the form that the old allows.

The new brings its own language.

The new brings its own home.

The new brings your ultimate reality.

I said that Joshu was a rare case…. Maneesha has brought one anecdote:

On first entering Nansen’s monastery, Joshu was made to serve in the kitchen as the stoker. One day he closed all the doors and piled wood on the fire until the whole kitchen was filled with smoke. Then he shouted, “Fire! Fire! Come to my rescue!”