THE ZEN MASTER MU-NAN HAD ONLY ONE SUCCESSOR. HIS NAME WAS SHOJU.
AFTER SHOJU HAD COMPLETED HIS STUDY OF ZEN, MU-NAN CALLED HIM INTO HIS ROOM AND SAID, "I AM GETTING OLD, AND AS FAR AS I KNOW YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO WILL CARRY ON THIS TEACHING. HERE IS A BOOK. IT HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN FROM MASTER TO MASTER FOR SEVEN GENERATIONS, AND I HAVE ALSO ADDED MANY POINTS ACCORDING TO MY UNDERSTANDING. THIS BOOK IS VERY PRECIOUS, AND I AM GIVING IT TO YOU TO REPRESENT YOUR SUCCESSORSHIP."
SHOJU REPLIED, "PLEASE KEEP THE BOOK. I RECEIVED YOUR ZEN WITHOUT WRITING, AND I WAS VERY HAPPY WITH IT, THANK YOU."
MU-NAN REPLIED, "I KNOW THAT, BUT THIS GREAT WORK HAS BEEN CARRIED FROM MASTER TO MASTER FOR SEVEN GENERATIONS, AND IT WILL BE A SYMBOL OF YOUR LEARNING. HERE, TAKE THE BOOK." THE TWO WERE TALKING IN FRONT OF A FIRE, AND THE INSTANT SHOJU FELT THE BOOK IN HIS HANDS HE THRUST IT INTO THE FLAMES.
MU-NAN, WHO HAD NEVER IN HIS LIFE BEEN ANGRY BEFORE, SHOUTED, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
AND SHOJU SHOUTED BACK, "AND WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

All books are dead, and that is how it should be; they cannot be alive. All scriptures are graveyards, they cannot be anything else. A word, the moment it is uttered, goes wrong. Unuttered, it is okay; uttered, it is falsified by the very utterance.
Truth cannot be said, cannot be written, cannot be indicated in any way. If it can be said, you will attain to truth just by hearing it; if it can be written, you will attain to truth just by reading it; if it can be indicated, you will attain to truth by mere indication. This is not possible, there is no way to transfer truth to you; there exists no bridge. It cannot be given, it cannot be communicated.
But people become addicted to scriptures, books, words, theories, because for the mind it is easy to understand a theory, it is easy to read a book, it is easy to carry a tradition. With anything dead the mind is always the master; with anything alive the mind becomes the slave.
So the mind is always afraid of life; it is the dead part in you. Just as hairs and nails are dead parts of your body, the parts that have died already and that the body is throwing out, so the mind is the dead part of your consciousness. It is the part that has already become dead, and the consciousness wants to get rid of it.
What is the mind? It is the past, the memory, the accumulated experience. But the moment you have experienced the thing, it is dead. Experiencing is in the present, experience is in the past.
The word can be possessed by the mind -- anything dead can be possessed by the mind; and only dead things can be possessed. If you try to possess a live thing there are only two ways: either you will not be able to possess it, or you will have to kill it first and then you can possess it. So wherever there is possession, there is murdering, killing.
If you love a person, love in itself is an experiencing, a moment-to-moment flow with no past being carried; the river remains fresh. But the mind says, "Possess this woman, possess this man, because who knows about the future? Possess! She may escape, she may go to somebody else, she may fall in love with someone else. Possess her and block all the ways of escape, close all the doors so she remains always yours." The mind has entered and now this woman will be killed, now this man will be murdered. There will be a husband, there will be a wife, but there will not be two live persons.
And this is the mischief the mind goes on doing everywhere. The moment you say, "I love," it has become an experience, it is already dead. Loving is something else; it is a process. Why when in love can you not say, "I love?" That would be profane. How can you say, "I love?" In love you are not, the possessor is not, so how can you say, "I love?" In love there is no 'I'; love is there of course but you are not.
While an experience is alive, experiencing, there is no ego. The process is there and you can say love is there, but you cannot say, "I love." In that love you have dissolved, you have merged and melted. Anything live, alive, is greater than you; anything dead and the mind can jump, just like a cat jumps on a mouse and catches hold of it.
Truth cannot be delivered, there is no way to deliver it. Once delivered it is dead, it has already become untrue.
Lao Tzu insisted on not saying anything about the truth his whole life. Whenever someone asked about truth he would say many things, but he would not say anything about the truth; he would avoid it. In the end he was forced to say something. Disciples, lovers, said he should write because he had known something which was rarely known, he had become something which was unique -- there would be no Lao Tzu again. So he wrote a small book, Tao Te Ching, but the first thing he said in it was, "Tao cannot be said, Truth cannot be uttered. And the moment you utter it, it is already false." And then he said, "Now I can write at ease. I have declared the basic fact: uttered, truth becomes false; written, it has already gone wrong."
Why is the word false? One thing: it always belongs to the past. Another thing: the word in itself cannot carry the experience to you.
The word is needed because you don't know, this is the problem. Because you don't know, the word is needed, so how can the word express? That which you don't know, the word cannot say to you. The word may be heard, you may memorize it, you may understand the meaning written in the dictionary -- what silence means is written in the dictionary, and you know it already -- but that is not the meaning.
Once a villager entered a big bank; many people were coming and going and much business was going on. Suddenly the villager cried, shouted at the top of his voice, "Did somebody drop a wad of notes with a rubber band around it?" Many people cried, "Yes, I did," and they ran towards him. A crowd gathered and everybody was claiming the money. The villager said, "I have found the rubber band."
The word will reach you but not with the weight of the notes. Those notes will be left behind; the word will reach but it is just a rubber band. It may have been around the notes, but still it is just a rubber band.
Truth is incommunicable.
So it is a trial between two evils.
The word you may not be able to understand but you can hear it, and some possibility is open. Hearing it continuously, you may become aware of something which has not been said in the word. The word will help, just as a bait -- you may be caught in the net.
With words a possibility opens, not a certainty because everything depends on you, but a possibility opens.