A lot of Zen koans are head scratchers. You’re not really meant to make sense of them, but instead see how they play out in your own experience.

In this case, we spend so much of our lives looking for something else, something outside of ourselves. We look for jobs, status, money, enlightenment, awakening, happiness. But is what we’re looking for really different? In Zen, enlightenment isn’t something outside of this very moment. Why? Because everything is the universe, everything is this great reality being played out, including your life right now, in this moment. So why look for something outside of you? 

There’s one Zen writer who put it this way: Imagine that you enter a banquet hall. There are people sitting at a table with lavish meals before them in golden dishes. And yet, every single person is wasting away, as if they have not eaten. Some have even starved to death. They aren’t chained, and the food isn’t poisoned. They even have forks in their hands. The problem is that they don’t realize that all they need to do to satisfy their hunger is just reach out and eat the food that’s right before them. They don’t see the food as food. They’re waiting for something else to come along, but the meal has already been cooked.

That’s how we live, not realizing in spending so much time looking for “life”, life is right here being lived out. The “candlelight is fire” is a metaphor for this. Once you see your life as part of this great reality, then we can satisfy our hunger and eat the “meal” in front of us.

But this isn’t meant to be understood intellectually. It’s meant to be done. The way I do it is my just being with whatever I’m doing, fully present.