The Sound of the Rain Needs No Translation

We've discussed the web from three points of view As an analogy of the selective operation of our senses and mind Whereby certain things in the world are picked out as significant according to certain game rules The game that we are playing mostly is the survival game That is to say the game ought to go on Only, the way we play the survival game has a kind of element in it Which makes it difficult Because we tend to say, "The first rule of this game is that it's serious." And that messes the whole thing up So, you have to watch out in other words when you play For contradictory game rules, self contradictory game rules Because if you get mixed up into them The game seizes to be worth the candle You start straining at doing something when it just isn't worth it Then the second thing that we observed Was the web as an analogy of mutual interdependence We could call it the idea that all existence is relative That all existence is transactional The transaction being typically exemplified by say the operation of buying and selling In which there can be no buying without somebody selling, and there can be no selling without somebody else buying That kind of interdependence of the inside going together with the outside What is in you going together with what is outside you Is absolutely fundamental to existence It is existence Existence is relativity, existence is relativity, existence is relativity What is in you going together with what is outside you Is absolutely fundamental to existence It is existence Existence is relativity, existence is relativity, existence is relativity Then we explored the web as a trap The spider's web, "Won't you come into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly And we saw what- look at all of life from the point of view That it is original selfishness and original hunger And we found that if you take that point of view to its ultimate extreme It dissolves And it isn't so bad after all Shakespeare says, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and theory, signifying nothing" When it's put that way, it doesn't seem so bad after all What is in you going together with what is outside you Is absolutely fundamental to existence It is existence Existence is relativity, existence is relativity, existence is relativity What is in you going together with what is outside you Is absolutely fundamental to existence It is existence Existence is relativity, existence is relativity, existence is relativity I remember that I had a Zen master friend who wrote a letter to a friend of mine, which was passed onto me This friend of mine was aspiring to be a writer And he was trying to write a novel that would put across Buddhism to people Sugar the pill And my Zen master friend didn't approve of this at all He said, "Don't write any story to people, write it to the great sky" Because all the real masters of literature, especially novelists and storytellers Are great masters of nonsense Think of Lewis Carroll You can use Lewis Carroll, and he did use Alice in Wonderland as a Zen textbook "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe" That's Zen I had a discussion with a great master in Japan We were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English He said, "That's a waste of time, If you really understand zen," he said "You could use any book, you could use the Bible, you could use Alice in Wonderland, you could use the dictionary" Because he said, "The sound of the rain needs no translation" The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation So what does the rain say? Evening rain It is the banana leaf that speaks of it first You see that's the point, and all the talk in the world Doesn't get it unless you listen to the talk in a new way The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation The sound of the rain needs no translation