A Japanese shogun was going crazy, at night screaming and swinging his sword trying to chop the ghosts of people he had killed in battle….
He finally went to Dogen, a Japanese Zen priest, and asked him to make it stop…..
Dogen pointed him to the moon’s reflection in the lake, and told him to kill the moon, or stop the reflection in the water …. so he started to chop it and chop it… he got so angry, he was ready to kill Dogen, thinking he was making fun of him….. but suddenly it dawned on him, that in trying to kill the ghosts in his mind, he was doing the same thing….. trying to GET RID of SOMETHING THAT IN FACT WASN’T THERE. He immediately sat down next to Dogen to have him be his teacher.
I believe strongly that this is why the teaching of the church does not work.
It is teaching us to get rid of our selfishness, but in fact the selfishness is a ghost…. so how do we get rid of it? How do we kill the ego??
We can’t….. because the ego is an illusion! We try to chop its head off, and two grow back…. It is the true 9 headed hydra!
Reality is Dharma 