Master Sheng-Yen then asked all of us in turn, "Where is your mind?" I answered directly from the experience that nothing exists: "Nowhere!" Shih-fu asked me immediately: "Who says this?" Just as immediately, and with deep conviction, I answered: "Nobody!" Shih-fu again questioned: "What about the body that speaks these words?" The answer came: "There is no body!" The master turned aside and remarked: "Empty."

Just before this I had been doing fast walking (with no one walking and no zendo to walk in), when Shih-fu shouted, "Stop!" Right before me was the scroll of Bodhidharma, and my eyes were gazing at the long fingernail on the third finger of his right hand. Shih-fu had then asked, "Where is your mind?" and I had answered inwardly, "In the third fingernail of Bodhidharma's right hand." When I told this to Master Sheng-Yen later, he said that this was a correct answer to the question, not the other series of answers I had given. He told me to let go of the experience of emptiness and continue to question "Who-am-l?" with strong effort.

Later that afternoon, on the final full day of retreat, I was to be led further into the realm of Ch'an towards which Bodhidharma's fingernail had been pointing. The realm of Ch'an is completely different from the perfect stillness and emptiness of prajnaparamita, where one does not even experience peace, for there is no one to experience it. The realm of Ch'an is a realm of laughter. For several hours while seated in the meditation hall I was swept with wave after wave of laughter at the wonderful impossibility of everything. Given the Truth that nothing really exists, we are presented with an endlessly varied universe, whose existence is impossible yet whose appearance is vividly undeniable. The utterly quiet, primordial expanse of Emptiness is continually surprised as when a big stone is thrown into a still pond or colorful rockets explode in black space. Like a child, one can only laugh in sheer delight.