‘A monk asked, “There are words and phrases everywhere and all of it is polluted. What is the higher truth?”
Cuiyan said, “There are words and phrases everywhere and all of it is polluted.”
The monk said, “What is a place where there are none?”
Cuiyan said, “The assembly is laughing at you.”‘ (Zen’s Chinese Heritage)
I read this as: there is ‘a place where there are none’, and there is a place where ‘all of it is polluted’, and trying to escape from the grit of everyday life to a place of ‘higher truth’ is a fool’s errand.
Shundo David Haye 