In the Gateless Barrier, Case 31, an old woman confronts the pilgrimage of monks with a presentation of immediacy. It's a common Zen trope is to answer to the question of "Where do you think you're going?" and "What do you think you're after?" with some version of "There's nowhere else to go! It's right here" It turns out it's not enough for Zen to respond it's just this. When asked about our aspirations we can have many lofty spiritual sounding reasons for practice. Truth be told, the real reasons we come to practice are a lot less high minded. So before we're too quick to say, "this is it!" we need to take an extra step of psychological honesty. Where do you really think you're going? When Chao-Chou investigates the old woman, he lets himself fall into the same trap and lets her admonish him without a smart comeback. What's going on here?