To return to the root is to find the meaning but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. What is the purpose of this whole play of existence? What is the meaning of all these trees growing, and human beings, and animals, and birds? What is the meaning of this earth and this heaven? What this meaning of this whole? Where will you find the meaning?
For the mind the meaning must be in the end - where this existence is moving to must be the meaning, the destination. For the mind the meaning must be somewhere in the destination: where we are going.
And this Sutra of Sosan says: To return to the root is to find the meaning....not in the future, not in desire and destination, not somewhere else, but to the root. Not in the end but in the beginning.
Try to understand. Many things have to be understood. First, If there is any meaning it must be in the seed - may be hidden, not visible, but it must be in the seed, because nothing can come which is not in the seed. Nothing can come out of emptiness.
Even if there is a destination it must be hidden in the seed, Just like a flower, hidden in the seed - the flower is the meaning of the tree. When it flowers it is ecstatic, when it blooms it sings and dances. It has attained, it is happy, it is delighted, it is not lacking anything any more. The flower is just a delight, the dance of the tree that " I have attained!"
But those flowers must have been somewhere in the seed, otherwise how can they happen? The end must be in the beginning; the Omega must be hidden in the alpha. Jesus says, " I am the beginning and the end. I am the alpha and the omega."
The Beginning is the end, because the end may not be revealed right now, but it must be there. And when it is in the seed, you need not wait for the future to come, For the flower to happen. You can penetrate the beginning right now, because here it is. The seed, remember is not in the past. The seed is always here and now in the Present.
