It is Enough Just to Be Alive

One morning Master Lin-chi was in the temple. Soon a young man came in and sat nearby with his eyes closed in a frozen pose. This young man was eager to become a disciple and thus thought to impress the Master…
Lin-chi walked over and, tapping him on the head with his knuckles, said:
– Get up and go! There are enough statues in our temple.
The distraught young man turned around on the threshold, and Lin-chi said:
– Be alive! Don’t claim and don’t try too hard!

There’s nothing we need to get that we don’t already have right here, right now.
We already have everything we need, we are already perfect.
It is enough just to be alive.

A Cup of Tea Is Enough

A monk once asked his master, “What is enlightenment?”
The master replied, “When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.”

“But everyone does that,” said the monk.
The master said, “No. When they eat, their minds are elsewhere. When they sleep, they dream of a thousand things. That is not eating. That is not sleeping.”

The Flower’s Silence

A monk asked the master, “How can I find enlightenment?”
The master led him to a garden and pointed to a flower. “Look at this flower. Does it ask to be more than it is? Does it seek enlightenment? It blooms, it sways in the wind, it lives. That is its perfection.”
The monk gazed at the flower, its petals bright under the sun. For a moment, his worries dissolved, and he felt the quiet joy of simply being.
The master nodded. “To be alive is to be as this flower—complete in this moment.”

Existence itself is the miracle. No extra meaning is needed—just wakefulness to the gift of being here.