WE WILL BE ENTERING the beautiful world of a Zen Master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him - this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence - it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.
Sosan remained a wandering monk his whole life. He never stayed anywhere; he was always passing, going, moving. He was a river; he was not a pond, static. He was a constant movement. That is the meaning of Buddha's wanderers: not only in the outside world but in the inside world also they should be homeless - because whenever you make a home you become attached to it. They should remain rootless; there is no home for them except this whole universe.

Even when it was recognized that Sosan had become enlightened, he continued his old beggar's way. And nothing was special about him. He was an ordinary man, the man of Tao.
One thing I would like to say, and you have to remember it: Zen is a crossbreeding. And just as more beautiful flowers can come out of crossbreeding, and more beautiful children are born out of crossbreeding, the same has happened with Zen.

Zen is a crossbreeding between Buddha's thought and Lao Tzu's thought. It is a great meeting, the greatest that ever took place. That's why Zen is more beautiful than Buddha's thought and more beautiful than Lao Tzu's thought. It is a tare flowering of the highest peaks and the meeting of those peaks. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist, but it carries both within it.

India is a little too serious about religion - a long past, a long weight on the mind of India, and religion has become serious. Lao Tzu remained a laughingstock - Lao Tzu is known as the old fool. He is not serious at all; you cannot find a more non-serious man.
Then Buddha's thought and Lao Tzu's thought met, India and China met, and Zen was born. And this Sosan was just near the original source when Zen was coming out of the womb. He carries the fundamental.

His biography is not relevant at all, because whenever a man becomes enlightened he has no biography. He is no more the form, so when he was born, when he died, are irrelevant facts. That's why in the East we have never bothered about biographies, historical facts. That obsession has never existed here. That obsession has come from the West now; then people become interested more in irrelevant things. When a Sosan is born, what difference does it make - this year or that? When he dies, how is it important?

Sosan is important, not his entry into this world and the body, not his departure. Arrivals and departures are irrelevant. The only relevance is in the being.

And these are the only words Sosan uttered. Remember, they are not words, because they come out of a mind which has gone beyond words. They are not speculations, they are authentic experiences. Whatsoever he says, he knows.
He is not a man of knowledge, he is a wise man. He has penetrated the mystery, and whatsoever he brings is very significant. It can transform you completely, totally. If you listen to him the very listening can become a transformation, because whatsoever he is saying is the purest gold.
But then it is difficult too, because the distance is very very great between you and him: you are a mind and he is a no-mind. Even if he uses words he is saying something in silence; you, even if you remain silent, go on chattering within.

....

So listen, but don't think. And then it is possible for much to happen within you, because I tell you: this man - this Sosan about whom nothing much is known - he was a man of power, a man who has come to know. And when he says something he carries something of the unknown to the world of the known. With him enters the divine, a ray of light into the darkness of your mind.
Before we enter into his words, remember the significance of the words, not the meaning; the music, the melody, not the meaning; the sound of his soundless mind, his heart, not his thinking. You have to listen to his being, the waterfall.

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and read further in: The Book of Nothing, chapter 1