Freedom is an empty word until then. The first object was to escape the bondage in which all finite beings find themselves, but if we do not cut asunder the very chain of ignorance with which we are bound hands and feet, where shall we look for deliverance? And this chain of ignorance is wrought of nothing else but the intellect and sensuous infatuation, which cling tightly to every thought we may have, to every feeling we may entertain. They are hard to get rid of, they are like wet clothes as is aptly expressed by the Zen masters. “We are born free and equal.” Whatever this may mean socially or politically, Zen maintains that it is absolutely true in the spiritual domain, and that all the fetters and manacles we seem to be carrying about ourselves are put on later through ignorance of the true condition of existence. All the treatments, sometimes literary and sometimes physical, which are most liberally and kindheartedly given by the masters to inquiring souls, are intended to get them back to the original state of freedom. And this is never really realised until we once personally experience it through our own efforts, independent of any ideational representation. The ultimate standpoint of Zen, therefore, is that we have been led astray through ignorance to find a split in our own being, that there was from the very beginning no need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite, that the peace we are seeking so eagerly after has been there all the time. Sotoba (Su Tung-p‘o),[1.8] the noted Chinese poet and statesman, expresses the idea in the following verse: “Misty rain on Mount Lu, And waves surging in Chê-chiang; When you have not yet been there, Many a regret surely you have; But once there and homeward you wend, And how matter-of-fact things look! Misty rain on Mount Lu, And waves surging in Chê-chiang.”[9] This is what is also asserted by Seigen Ishin (Ch‘ing-yüan Wei-hsin), according to whom, “Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters.”[1.10] Bokuju (Mu-chou) who lived in the latter half of the ninth century, was once asked, “We have to dress and eat every day, and how can we escape from all that?” The master replied, “We dress, we eat.” “I do not understand you,” said the questioner. “If you don’t understand put your dress on and eat your food.”[1.11]