The Great Question of Life and Death in the Depths of the Soul

Now, amid the pandemic, the questions the security guards ask at the entrance of residential compounds are great questions of life and death that strike straight into the depths of the soul:

1. Who are you?

2. Where do you come from?

3. Where are you going?

Then they give your forehead a shot. This shot is precisely a Zen repartee of the Chan school: if you awaken, you awaken on the spot; if you do not awaken, then go and investigate the above three questions. Each of us has lived through countless kalpas, yet does not even know who we are, nor where we come from or where we are going. We live like walking corpses, no different in any significant way from animals—merely alive. Is it not time to wake up?

In the face of the great matter of birth and death, the security guards have taken the place of the Chan patriarchs. That shot is like the patriarchs' stick and shout, and those three questions are just like Chan huatou—like a crowbar for the brain. Whoever's mind is quick and sharp will be the first to have their brain pried open.