Introduction to the book: What is the revolution?

If it is really true that through authentic masters revolutionary evidences spring out and speak out, for a zen monk, it is totally indecent to hide behind a revolutionary ideal.

The revolution which will transform our world in a more advanced one cannot consist in the confrontation of the Blacks against the Whites, of the goods against the evils, of the poor against the rich, of the persecuted against the persecutors! It cannot be only that, even if these are the first symptoms. The revolutionary perception of a zen monk is much more profound. For example, talking about Marcos zapatist revolution, the result is obvious. How can we be happy with such a phenomenon? It is easy for an intellectual person to hide behind his newspaper, to take a decision and use for his own body the revolutionary energy of these poor people who risk their life in fighting. In this phenomenon, youth, namely what is alive and spontaneous, risks to be squashed and totally annihilated.

It is this way from many years in South America. It is like destroying a forest to build a freeway or an airport. The worst is, even when the revolution is victorious, that it becomes very quickly rigid like ice. The Cubans escape by swimming to the United States. Thirty years ago, Mao Tse-Tung proclaimed to have won the revolution, and today the entire world is waiting for the revolution of the revolution. If the revolution of the revolution arrives in China, the Chinese will be able to drink Coca-Cola and have credit cards.

Then what is the attitude to take? Could we not believe in an honest and free world where each of us feels responsible? Carlos Castaneda tells how Don Juan was sent by his master to go back and work in the hacienda where he was exploited when he was young, where he almost lost his life and where young Indians were confined illegally and forced to slavery. At no time Don Juan has any feeling of hate. Only be honest and impeccable with oneself, only the inner practice from which the phenomena are sucked like in a whirlwind.

To realize a revolution, we should use the magic weapon that no one can neither catch nor stop. To get this weapon, everybody should continuously work on himself. On himself, but not only for himself. The problems which concern the world should not be approached with an ordinary state of mind but with the entire body, with our zazen practice. The magic power of zazen is beyond what can be controlled.

Questioning our own revolutionary concepts is much more difficult that to stay attached to them. That drives to silence because it is impossible to say anything about it. When we are sincerely asking ourselves questions on our own concepts, we are not anymore only revolutionary, we become ourselves the revolution, the alive and silent revolution. Sit down firmly, without any goal, stay still. Practice zazen, kin hin, sampai, the three fundamental postures, and samu, the work which does not have any personal goal but the good of everybody. We should stop pretending that we understand something. Let the truth and the cosmic energy emerge spontaneously, teach the profound freedom and the correct attitude to others, not to make propaganda, but to help them really, and spread this influence so that the world changes. But the world does not change in a conceptual direction.

The real evolution is the opening of consciousness and responsibility. Simply in silence, this evolution will bring the entire world in the whirlwind, the whirlwind of things to their right places, because the fundamental nature of everything is revolutionary.

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