Once there lived a professor—a scholar renowned for his immense knowledge. He had an answer ready for every question posed to him. However, a certain void haunted him. What made it worse was that he wasn’t sure what it was, a restlessness without an identity. The man with all the answers now stood without one, and that too, to his own question.
Realising his predicament, a colleague suggested meeting a Zen monk in a nearby monastery. The professor was in two minds. If he didn’t have an answer, wonder how the monk would? Yet the unexplained vacuum continued to torment him.
After mulling over it for a few days, the professor finally decided to meet the monk. “There’s no harm in meeting him even if he has no answer”, the professor reasoned.
When the professor reached the monastery, the monk was busy tending to the flowers in the garden. Upon hearing merely a conversation-opener from the monk, the professor went into a diatribe on various topics he was proficient in. The monk was amused and asked more questions, as he found the professor ready with answers. The look on the monk’s face puffed the professor’s chest with pride. It was a common sight for him. He found it similar to his listeners’ awestruck response whenever he spoke, though this time he had read it wrong. In all this, what the professor found odd was that the monk hardly said anything other than posing questions.
Later, the monk offered the professor tea. However, much to the professor’s shock, the monk kept pouring the tea into the visitor’s cup even after the cup was full, spilling the tea on to the table.
“Mind if I interrupt you?” the professor asked, getting perturbed as the monk continued to pour. “The cup is already full. You can’t add more”.
“Thanks for bringing it to my attention”, the monk smiled. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. Since you’re full of opinions and theories, I was wondering how I could put even a drop of truth into it”.
The professor smiled. He knew what was troubling him all along. This happened centuries ago, but it’s something that resonates with how most of us approach everything, even our spiritual pursuits. Like the professor, our minds are full of preconceived notions, theories and opinions. We need to clear them to let truth enter.
Rajessh M. Iyer is a storyteller who explores human relationships through meaningful anecdotes, parables, and stories; he shares his work on www.
