Zen koan: When the waters run, your bath either fills or empties??

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The old Zen master, Rochen Diproche, was perplexed by one of his students, and it is not often that such a great master could be stumped. The student had solved every koan that Rochen had given him to work on, but still, he had made only minor progress towards penetrating more deeply into the real truth behind these koans, of which, they were merely a key to a door, into these greater truths. Finally, then, one day, the master was taking a bath. As the water ran into the bath in order to fill it up, he thought of another koan for his unteachable student. Afterwards then, he once again approached this stubborn student, and he gave him this koan. "What does the sound of running water sound like in a bathtub, when the bathtub is empty, and full?" The student scratched his head, and blurted out quickly his answer: "There is no essential difference, because as soon as the water tap is turned on the sound comes alive, and sound is just sound, fundamentally so." "Go, and have a bath then," the old master said. At this, the student saw at last to the truth of it all. Answers answer nothing of themselves. We must immerse ourselves in the truth for it to be real to us too. We must live from the truth in our hearts, not just try to find it in our minds, and then leave it there, in our minds, doing nothing else. Photo Credit: The photo used here is taken from the free media site: pixabay.com The old master seemed to be hitting his head against the wall with this student.