It happened once that a man came to a Zen master. He had read all the scriptures, memorized them, and had become a great philosopher because he was very efficient at using words, logic.
And this Zen master was just a villager, just like the beggar who said, "I am not lost." He had never read the Lotus Sutra, one of the greatest Buddhist scriptures, worth preserving, always keeping near.
Just as there are bedside books, so the Lotus Sutra is a heartside book; it is concerned with the heart. The lotus is the symbol for the heart: fully bloomed, in full bloom, it is the heart. And Buddhists think there is nothing comparable to the Lotus Sutra.
This man had memorized the whole Lotus Sutra. He could repeat it from anywhere. Ask any question and immediately he would answer — like a computer, very efficiently. So he asked the Zen master, "Have you read the Lotus Sutra?"
The Zen master said, "Lotus Sutra? Never heard of it."
The man, the pundit, the scholar, said, "Never heard of it? And people think you are enlightened!"
The Zen master said, "People must be wrong. I am an ignorant man, how can I be enlightened?"
The scholar was at ease now, so he said, "Now I will repeat the Lotus Sutra. Can you read?"
The monk said, "I can't read."
So the man said, "Okay, then listen to me and I will explain anything you want to ask."
He had come to seek a master but now he had become a master. The ego never wants to be a disciple, it is always in search of being a master. How the buddha must have laughed at the situation! The master became the disciple, and the disciple became the master and said, "Listen."
The master started listening. The disciple said, "Okay." He began to repeat the Lotus Sutra.
In the Lotus Sutra, it is said everything is emptiness — this world is empty, hell is empty, heaven is empty, God is empty, everything is emptiness. Emptiness is the nature of all things, nothingness, so be attuned to nothingness and you will achieve.
Suddenly the master jumped and hit the pundit on the head. The pundit became mad.
He started shouting and said, "Not only are you not enlightened, not only are you ignorant, you seem to be neurotic also. What are you doing?"
The master sat again and said, "If everything is nothingness, from where does this anger come? The world is emptiness, heaven is emptiness, hell is emptiness, the nature of things is nothingness. From where does this anger come?"
The pundit was puzzled. He said, "It is not written in the Lotus Sutra. You ask foolish questions. It is not written in the Lotus Sutra. The whole Sutra I have memorized — and this is no way of asking a question, hitting me is no way of asking a question."
But this is the only way. Theories are not of much help. You can say that everything is nothingness, but just a little hit and anger arises out of nothingness; a woman passes and sex arises out of nothingness; you look at a beautiful house and the desire to possess arises out of nothingness. When Buddha said everything is nothingness, he was saying: If you can understand this, nothing will arise. How can anything arise out of nothingness? Nothingness is a meditation, not a theory; it is a falling into the abyss. Then anger cannot arise and sex cannot arise — how can they?
There are two types of persons: one, those who are in search of theories — and please don't be that type, because that is the most stupid type; and the other type is the wise type, those in search of experience, not of theories.
OSHO