Eshun’s Departure

When Eshun, the Zennun, was past sixty and about to leave the world, she asked some monks to pile up wood in the yard. Seating herself firmly in the center of the funeral pyre, she had it set fire around the edges.

“O nun!” shouted the monk, “is it hot in there?”

“Such a matter would concern only a stupid person like yourself,” answered Eshun.

The flames arose, and she passed away.

Gudo and the Emperor

The emperor Goyozei was studying Zen under Gudo. He inquired: “In Zen this very mind is Buddha. Is this correct?” Gudo answered: “If I say yes, you will think that you understand without understanding. If I say no, I would be contradicting a fact which many understand quite well.”

On another day the emperor asked Gudo: “Where does the enlightened man go when he dies?”

Gudo answered: “I know not.”

In the Hands of Destiny

A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt.

On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his man, “After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If head comes we will win; if tails we will loose. Destiny holds us in her hand.”

Killing

Gasan instructed his adherents one day: “Those who speak against killing and who desire to spare the live of all conscious beings are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who are destroying wealth and those who destroy political economy? We should not overlook them. Furthermore, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism.”

Kasan Sweat

Kasan was asked to officiate at the funeral of a provincial lord. He had never met lords and nobler before so he was nervous.

When the ceremony started, Kasan sweated.

Afterwards, when he had returned, he gathered his pupils together. Kasan confessed that he was not yet qualified to be a teacher for he lacked the sameness of bearing in the world of fame that he possessed in the secluded temple. Then Kasan resigned and became the pupil of another master. Eight years later he returned to his former pupils, enlightened.

The Subjugation of a Ghost

A young wife fell sick and was about to die. “I love you so much,” she told her husband, “I do not want to leave you. Do not go from me to any other woman. If you do, I will return as a ghost and cause you endless trouble.”

Soon the wife passed away. The husband respected her last wish for the first three months but then he met another woman and fell in love with her. They became engaged to be married.

Children of His Majesty

Yamaoka Tesshu was a tutor of the emperor. He was also a master of fencing and a profound student of Zen. His home was the abode of vagabonds. He had but one suit of clothes, for they kept him always poor.

The emperor, observing how worn his garments were, gave Yamaoka some money to buy new ones. The next rime Yamaoka appeared he wore the same old outfit.

What Are You Doing! What Are You Saying!

In modern times a great deal of nonsense is talked about masters and disciples, and about the inheritance of a master’s teaching by favorite pupils, entitling them to pass the truth on to their adherents. Of course Zen should be imparted in this way, from heart to heart, and in the past it was really accomplished. Silence and humility reigned rather than profession and assertion. The one who received such a teaching kept the matter hidden even after twenty years. Not until another discovered through his own need that a real master was at hand was it learned that the teaching had been imparted, and even then the occasion arose quite naturally and the teaching made its way in its own right. Under no circumstance did the teacher ever claim “I am the successor of So-and-so.” Such a claim would prove quite the contrary

One Note of Zen

After Kakua visited the emperor he disappeared and no one knew what became of him. He was the first Japanese to study Zen in China, but since he showed nothing of it, save one note, he is not remembered for having brought Zen into his country.

Kakua visited China and accepted the true teaching. He did not travel while he was there. Meditating constantly, he lived on a remote part of a mountain. Whenever people found him and asked him to preach he would say a few words and then move to another part of the mountain where he could be found less easily.

Eating the Blame

Circumstances arose one day which delayed preparation of the dinner of a Sate Zen master, Fugai, and his followers. In haste the cook went to the garden with his curved knife and cut off the tops of green vegetables, chopped them together, and made soup, unaware that in his haste he had included a part of a snake in the vegetables.

The followers of Fugai thought they never had tasted such good soup. But when the master himself found the snake’s head in his bowl, he summoned the cook, “What is this?” he demanded, holding up the head of the snake.