Short story: Stay away from contention of any sort

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The old Zen master, Artrop Verboxki, had been the Zen master for the last fifteen years, of the Longarc Zen Monastery, after the mantle was passed onto him by the last master, who had died, but not before picking his next successor. There had been some animosity at his choice, as he had overlooked the next obvious one in line, and picked the cleaner of the monastery, instead of the scholar, well versed in Zen, but with no practical wisdom in its use. The old Zen master had put it rather pithily, like this. "Wisdom gained from books is lost in the books, unless the heart has supplied the key to them for the mind to truly understand. The heart knows what the mind does not yet know, and my choice of the cleaner shows this, as this man knows Zen in his heart, not theoretically from his mind alone. The choice had turned out to be a good one, as this cleaner cleaned out the minds of the students, all well-versed in Zen, in their minds, but devoid of any real understanding in connecting learning to love in their hearts. He had given them heart koans, rather than mind koans, to work with, such as this one: "Out from love, a new mind is grown." The term, "heart koan," came from out of his teachings, that help to break a student of Zen, away from his logical mind, to reveal the truer truth of their heart-self, rather than just the lesser truth of their mind-self. This frees the mind from being captured within itself, by itself. All contention comes from the mind, never from a heart of only love. Always allow your heart to draw a longer arc than your mind; in fact our minds seldom even see an arc, but usually stays with its own rigid straight lines. Only freedom of the heart brings enlightenment to the mind. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The cleaner had even made sure that the monastery lake was always clean too.