As was explained in the preceding section, the principle underlying the various methods of instruction used by the Zen masters is to awaken a certain sense in the pupil’s own consciousness, by means of which he intuitively grasps the truth of Zen. Therefore, the masters always appeal to what we may designate “direct action” and are loathe to waste any lengthy discourse on the subject. Their dialogues are always pithy and apparently not controlled by rules of logic. The “repetitive” method as in other cases conclusively demonstrates that the so-called answering is not to explain but to point the way where Zen is to be intuited. To conceive the truth as something external which is to be perceived by a perceiving subject, is dualistic and appeals to the intellect for its understanding, but according to Zen we are living right in the truth, by the truth, from which we cannot be separated. Says Gensha (Hsüan-sha),[6.44] “We are here as if immersed in water head and shoulders underneath the great ocean, and yet how piteously we are extending our hands for water!” Therefore, when he was asked by a monk,[6.44] “What is my self?” he at once replied, “What would you do with a self?” When this is intellectually analysed, he means that when we begin to talk about self we immediately and inevitably establish the dualism of self and not-self, thus falling into the errors of intellectualism. We are in the water—this is the fact, and let us remain so, Zen would say, for when we begin to beg for water we put ourselves in an external relation to it and what has hitherto been our own will be taken away from us. The following case may be interpreted in the same light: A monk came to Gensha and said,[6.44] “I understand you to say this that the whole universe is one transpicuous crystal; how do I get at the sense of it?” Said the master, “The whole universe is one transpicuous crystal, and what is the use of understanding it?” The day following the master himself asked the monk, “The whole universe is one transpicuous crystal, and how do you understand it?” The monk replied, “The whole universe is one transpicuous crystal, and what is the use of understanding it?” “I know,” said the master, “that you are living in the cave of demons.” While this looks another case of “Repetition,” there is something different in it, something more of intellection, so to speak.