'The Buddha stood beside a lake on Mount Grdhakuta and prepared to give a sermon to his disciples who were gathering there to hear him speak. As the Buddha waited for his students to settle down, he noticed a golden lotus blooming in the muddy water nearby. He pulled the plant out of the water - flower, long stem, and root. Then he held it up high for all his students to see.
For a long time he stood there, saying nothing, just holding up the lotus and looking into the blank faces of his audience. Suddenly his disciple, Mahakashyapa, smiled. He understood! What did Mahakashyapa understand? Everybody wants to know. For centuries everybody's been asking, "What message did the Buddha give to Mahakashyapa?"'
When Mahakashyapa smiled, what was he smiling at? There have been many suggestions, but I think we can reject all the figurative, allegorical, speculative and fanciful ones like 'Buddha trinity', representation of the Chakras etc. If we think of the flower, we can see that it is perfect, it is a real flower. It didn't become a perfect flower through thinking about it or planning to be a flower; it didn't dream of becoming a flower; it didn't study hard to become a flower. It didn't chant or pray to become a flower. Becoming a flower was its essential nature; it flowered because it was a flower. Maybe you are thinking, 'oh, that's no big deal, it was just a flower.' But that
is a big deal. It was just a flower. For, you know, in Zen, that small word "just" is a big word.
I don't know if you have ever been to Kruger Park, in South Africa. Kruger Park is as big as Belgium-- a park full of animals, not people. Most tourists who go there go there looking for the 'Big Five': elephants, lions, and so on. And they can see them,they can find them. But the first animals they will see there are usually these antelope they call impala or maybe the wild pigs known as warthogs. And usually, most tourists just drive straight past the antelopes and pigs, searching for the Big Five. You know, those impalas and warthogs are beautiful creatures, and they are perfect. But to tourists they are just impalas and just warthogs, so they don't stop and look at them. Their heads are full of the Big Five.
The Buddha held up a flower. That was his sermon, his wordless sermon. And Mahakashyapa looked; and Mahakashyapa understood. Because the flower was true to its essential nature, it was beautiful and perfect. It had real beauty and perfection-- the beauty and perfection that can't be written about or spoken of but the beauty of perfection that arises directly and spontaneously from truth.
What the Buddha was revealing was the flower's truth, the flower's essential nature, what we might call its 'buddha nature', if you like. Words can't reveal it or express it, such truth has to be perceived intuitively. And Mahakashyapa perceived this, and so he smiled. This was Zen's beginning, this was Zen's moment, its epiphany. And whenever we behold that smile and recognise it for ourselves, it becomes our smile too and so the transmission continues even as the world continues to turn.
