Zen Story: The waffling Zen master talked in waffles, until he was told not to waffle.

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The Zen master, Groblek Gruskkin, loved to talk to groups of people about Zen, but he always talked for too long, and a lot of people left, before he had finished speaking. He would go on, and on, waffling along, with added anecdotes, and side excursions, to the subject matter of his main talk. One day, the old master was talking on the subject of, "Communicative exploratoriness." A fancy title indeed, but he always liked to pick such flowery sounding titles for his talks too. He said in his talk that when we talk to anyone, either one to one, or one to many, a certain type of conversational input comes alive from the connective thrust of the mind of the speaker, ad-libbing to the subject, if he does not control himself "I am guilty of this myself," the master told his audience, "but just recently, I had a new student reject me as a teacher for himself, because he told me Zen is more pointedly directed than a waffled waffler approach that scatters its gems into sand for others to find for themselves." "A true teacher will not waffle, but will direct his students to the spots in the sand where the treasures are buried, and so he will talk succinctly, and short, and let the student think about stuff through direct connections, rather than warbled intricatenessness." "Not many students have the courage to reject teachers like this, and I could see, or so I thought, at the time, that as I was already old now, he thought, that I could probably not change my style of talking." "I now realise that this young student was already a Zen master. He is sent around the monasteries by his father, the renowned Zen master, Artlick Ripoche, to see how set in their ways, the Zen masters, in charge of some temples have become." "At least, I had enough Zen left in me to see this, and to try to change my ways, from here on in." Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The Zen master finally sharpened up his talking about truth, rather than blunting himself and his edification of truth, through waffling. He was no longer talked about as being, "The Zen Waffler".