The Cypress in the Garden
"What is the great truth?" Zhaozhou pointed: "The cypress tree there, in the garden."
Seeking truth only in grand words, am I passing carelessly by the single tree outside the window?
📝Reflection
A practitioner asked Zhaozhou what the deepest truth was. He surely expected something grand. Zhaozhou raised his hand and pointed at the cypress in the yard. It seems a deflating answer, yet the blade is right there. The belief that truth lies apart, in abstract concepts or distant scriptures — Zhaozhou snaps it with a single cypress. Truth stands green before your eyes right now. We merely see it as "just a tree" and walk past. This koan does not explain its answer. It only turns our eyes from the abstract to the concrete, from the far away to here and now. An eye that can see the truth in one utterly ordinary tree — that is where Zhaozhou pointed.
🌱Apply It Today
For just 30 seconds today, look at one tree outside the window or by the road not as "just a tree" but as a living, breathing presence. That exercise of turning the eye from the abstract is this koan.
This verse is read as universal humanistic wisdom, not religion — no faith is promoted, and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.
