Says we practice meditation, but without adequate instruction, I simply did not know what I was supposed to be doing. I puzzled over this so much that I became a great bag of doubt. Only when the bottom fell out of the barrel were we allowed to see the master. But nobody seemed to know what this meant, and my doubts could not be resolved at this time, I. The war. Years were very bad. When the exiled Chinese government went to Taiwan, I was in the army and went with them. So between the ages of 18 and 28 I was a soldier. There was no way I could leave the army. Between 1949 and 1959 after that, I became a monk again and lived in a temple in Taiwan and edited the magazine humanity. I was in training, of course, and attended retreats. Great doubt persisted. I was constantly wondering what enlightenment or Buddhahood was. There were so many contradictions in the teachings that I could make no sense of them. The deeper I looked, the worse it became. Then he tells a story of a insight that he had since when I was 28 I had a profound experience of dropping the mind. I had been practicing a lot, and had had some small experiences, yet all these questions kept running through my head. I went on retreat in a monastery in southern Taiwan where a famous monk, Lin Yuan was visiting. One night, he and I were sharing the same sleeping platform, seeing that he was meditating. I sat with him. These questions were going round and round in a circle, one leading to another. They were all about the nature of vexations, life and death. After some hours, it was past midnight, and these questions became intolerable. I asked the master whether I could ask him a question. He said yes, but when I started there was this sudden flow of questions like water. They all poured out of my mouth. It went on and on for two or three hours. I really felt I needed answers from this monk who seemed free and easy in himself, all he did was to listen, said nothing or simply asked any more. Very strange. I had started with one question, and suddenly there was this endless flow. It was the great ball of doubt. Finally, the master suddenly sighed, lifted his hand and struck the bed hard, put it down, he said, suddenly, my mind seemed to snap. I was pouring with sweat, and felt a great weight suddenly lifted from me. There was nothing. There seemed that there was no problem anywhere in the world, everything had gone. We simply sat on not saying a word. I was extremely happy. The next day, the whole world was fresh, as if I were seeing it for the first time. Then he says, in the practice of meditation, it is not possible to see the nature. That's the term that Sheng yen uses for the Japanese word Kensho. It's not possible to see the nature through willing it or even intending it. You have to let go into purposeless practice. If there is purpose, the discriminating mind is active and the ego is present, you just work hard on your method. It is not waiting. It is not even not waiting.