Hui-Hai, a Zen painter, was ordered by the Chinese Emperor to paint some flowers for his palace. Hui-Hai said, “Then I will have to live with flowers.”

But the Emperor said, “There is no need. In my garden every flower is there. You go and paint!”

Hui-Hai said, “Unless I feel the flowers, how can I paint? I must know the spirit. And by eyes how can the spirit be known, and by hands how can the spirit be touched? So I will have to live in intimacy with them.”

“Sometimes with closed eyes, just sitting by their side, just feeling the breeze that communicates, just feeling the scent that comes, I can be just in a silent communion with them. Sometimes the flower is just a way to admire beauty but, sometimes the flower flowers.”

“Sometimes the flower is young and the mood is different, and sometimes the flower becomes old and death lingers. And sometimes the flower is happy and celebrating, and sometimes the flower is sad. So how can I just go and paint? I will have to live with the flowers. And the flower that was born, one day will die! I must know the whole biography. I must live with it from its birth to death, and I must feel it in its so many multi-multi moods.”

“I must know how it feels in the night when darkness is there, and how it feels in the morning when the sun has come up, and how, when a bird flies and a bird sings, how the flower feels then. How, when storm winds come, and how when everything is silent…I must know it in its multiplicity of being-intimately-as a friend, as a participant, as a witness, as a lover.”

“I must be related to it! Only then can I paint it, and then, too, I cannot promise, because the flower may prove such a vastness that I may not be capable of painting it. So, I cannot promise, I can only try.”

Six months passed, and the Emperor became impatient. Then he said, “Where is that Hui-Hai? Is he still trying to commune?”

The gardener said, “We cannot disturb him. He has become so intimate with the trees that sometimes we pass just nearby and we cannot feel that a man is there! – He has become just a tree. He goes on contemplating.”

Six months had passed. The Emperor came and he said, “What are you doing? When will you paint?”

Hui-Hai said, “Don’t disturb me. If I am to paint, I must forget about painting completely. So don’t let me remember again! Don’t disturb me! How can I live intimately if there is some purpose? How is intimacy possible if I am just here as a painter and just trying to be intimate because I have to paint? What nonsense! No business is possible here, don’t come again. When the right time comes I will come myself, but I cannot promise. The right time may come or it may not come.”

And for three years the Emperor waited. Then Hui-Hai came. He came into his royal court, and the Emperor said, “Now don’t paint it because you have become just like a flower. I see in you all the flowers I have seen! In your eyes, in your gestures, in your moving, in your walking, you have become just a flower.”

Hui-Hai said, “I have come just to say that I cannot paint, BECAUSE THE MAN WHO WAS THINKING TO PAINT IS NO MORE.”

Intellectual understanding is merely grasping concepts, theories and doctrines about spirituality. We can understand the Buddhist teachings on the nature of reality, karma or the path to enlightenment. For example, we can learn about a beautiful landscape by reading about it in a book without ever actually experiencing the landscape for ourselves. We can understand the details and scenery through the book, but we cannot truly experience the joy, awe and wonder of being there until we actually see it and walk through it. Our intellectual understanding gets in the way of direct experience by clinging to concepts and limiting our ability to perceive reality directly.

Spiritual awakening is a deeper, more experiential realization that goes beyond intellectual knowledge. It’s a direct experience of the truth, a shift in consciousness, and a transformation of one’s being. It’s about seeing the truth directly, not just understanding it.