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112 I YASUTANI ' s INTERVIEws WITH WESTERNERSyou can do zazen for years without coming any closer to your goalof satori. On the other hand, there are many people whose joriki iscomparatively weak and yet who attain satori.STUDENT: Why, then, should I bother to develop joriki?Rosm: Only because you cannot carry on spiritual practice unlessyour thoughts and emotions are under natural restraint. Once youacquire this natural control through jori.ki, you are no longer compulsivelydriven. You are free to experience attractive sights or sounds,let us say, or to ignore them, with no aftermath of remorse. Nevertheless,until enlightenment your view of the world and your relationto it will be blurred-in other words, still dominated by the idea of"self'' and "other"-and you will be misled by your imperfect vision.Self-realization can come, as I have said, with only a little zazenand correspondingly little joriki, but without jori.ki it is difficult toredirect one's habitual actions so that they accord with the truthone has experienced. It is only after enlightenment, when one nolonger sees the world and himself as two, that one's potentialitiesunfold to their fullest, provided always one continues with zazen andthe development of joriki.STUDENT: I can appreciate all that, but my problem still is: Howam I to entertain the question "What is Mu?" when I find it entirelymeaningless? I can't even formulate the question for myself, muchless resolve it. Ifl were to say to you "What is baba?"1 it would haveno meaning for you. I fmd Mu equally meaningless.ROsm: That is predsely why Mu is such an excellent koan ! Torealize your Self-nature you have to break out of the cul-de-sac oflogic and analysis. The ordinary question demands a rational answer,but trying to answer "What is Mu?" rationally is like trying to smashyour fist through an iron wall. This question forces you into a realmbeyond reasoning. But your effort to solve it is not without meaning.What you are really trying to find out is "What is my True-self?"Through the way I have specified you can discover it. If you prefer,you may ask yourself: "What is my True-self?"STUDENT: Or what am I? or who am I?Rosm: Yes, exactly.* * *1 Unwittingly the student chose a word which has several meanings in Japanese.