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A Zen poem runs:

TO DISPLAY AT LAST MATURITY OF SPIRIT.

To the man of enlightenment, everybody else is simply retarded; they have not grown up. Everybody grows old, but that does not mean that everybody grows up. Growing old is a different direction, horizontal; from the cradle to the graveyard - direct! You don't have to ask anybody where the graveyard is, you will get there. And everybody else is so ready. The moment you stop breathing, nobody bothers to wait; they immediately take you to the graveyard.

But to grow up is a totally different dimension: it is vertical. It has nothing to do with age. It has nothing to do with time. It has something to do with maturity, integrity, a centeredness.

Chora's haiku reads:

MOON GAZING:

LOOKING AT IT, IT CLOUDS OVER; NOT LOOKING, IT BECOMES CLEAR.

Zen has a very poetic way of expressing the inexpressible. Now Chora is saying that if you look at it, clouds are going to hide the moon, because the very desire to look at it creates clouds. Whenever you are full of desires, you are surrounded by clouds. And the moment you don't want anything - even if you don't want to open your eyes - all clouds disappear, and the moon shines in an empty and silent sky.

Another Zen poet:

CLOUDS COME FROM TIME TO TIME - AND BRING TO MEN A CHANCE TO REST FROM LOOKING AT THE MOON.

In the world of Zen, there are a few symbols which are specially used by poets, painters, mystics.

You will come across bamboos again and again, because the bamboos have a quality of Zen: they are hollow inside. Inside there is nothing, and because of this nothingness, they can become flutes.

Because of this inner hollowness, songs can be born out of them. Every bamboo has the capacity to become a flute. For these strange reasons, certain things have become very much symbolic of Zen: the moon, because it reflects in the lake, in the ocean, in the river. There is one moon and millions of reflections, one consciousness and millions of manifestations.

So when you read Zen, remember, its symbols do not have ordinary dictionary meanings; they have a special quality to them. Clouds are used; you will come across many references to them. This whole series is devoted to the clouds, because the cloud is the symbol, in Zen, of freedom: no roots, nothing to tie it down, every direction available to move, with no map and no guide - but with what dignity, and with what joy! The cloud goes on moving from east to west, from west to east. The whole sky is its territory; it knows no boundaries.

For certain reasons, Zen has picked up a few symbols. You have to understand them in the Zen way.

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