Zen story: The Zen master's dream

Tweet

The old Zen master, Sergeff Kerploski, was having the same dream every night. A large brown bear was chasing after him in his dream, but it never did catch him. The master thought this might literally mean that his life had become rather hard, and overbearing, to him lately. He had lost some of his hearing power, and not being able to hear properly, did annoy him a bit, as he could not hear fully the answers of his students, to the koans, that he gave them. In fact, he was now asking them to give him their written answers to his questions. A bear is a very strong animal, and it appearing in his dreams, also made the master think that he was no longer the same man of strength, that he once was too. He was still connected to God, though, and the bear was symbolising this by its connection to oldness, and newness, as indicated by its yearly hibernation. The Zen master needed to take a rest from running, and seek connection to the strength still in him, instead of running away with the thought, that he had lost much of his strength now. The old master used his dream to construct a new koan for his students then: It went like this: "If a bear chases you, what is chasing it?" None of his students could come up with an answer, and so the old master had to eventually answer his koan himself. His answer was as simple, as it was profound. "Life chases no one, unless you chase it." and so we must reach up to God, not down to our self. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com A bear symbolises strength, and connection to strength.