If you experience genuine enlightenment, there is nothing to be said. There is no discrimination. To say anything, you must compare this to that; you must explain one thing in terms of another; you must speak from your point of view or another person's point of view. When you say something is low, it is only because you are above it. But, when there is no discrimination, and everything is in harmony and undifferentiated, there is nothing to say.

A great Ch'an master named Han Shan lived during the latter part of the Ming Dynasty. Master Han Shan recorded a dream in which he went to a public bath. He saw a beautiful woman beckoning him to join her in a pool. In his dream, Han Shan thought, "I'm a monk. I can't take a bath with a woman!" The woman persisted, and finally she came after him. At that moment, Han Shan realized the person was really a man whose features were so beautiful that he looked like a woman. The man then poured water over Han Shan's head, whereupon a cool feeling pervaded his body. The cool feeling stayed with him long after he woke up.

In assessing his dream, Han Shan understood that in the human world people distinguish between male and female. But in the Pure Land there is no such distinction. Fundamentally, there is no male or female. Calling the person in Han Shan's dream a man or woman is discrimination, a mental act of dividing the world into categories. Similarly, there are no distinctions in the realm of genuine enlightenment.