Allspirit

Tag: master

  • Nothing exists

    Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku. Desiring to know his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentinent beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing be received.”

    Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry. “If nothing exists,” inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”

    From: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

    More Zen writings on Allspirit

     

     

  • Hastamalaka

    Here he was to get one more great disciple. Prabhakara was a brahmin.
    He had a son who was a dumb boy. He appeared to be dull. But Shankara
    felt that he was a yogi. Instead of asking the parents who had brought
    the boy ‘Why is the boy like this? since when?’ he asked the boy
    straightaway : “Who are you, my boy?” What else could be so sacred a
    place as the one where the divine master was standing for the yogi to
    break his silence? One who was dumb spoke in answer, “I am the eternal
    self and not dead matter.” This was the simplest form of expressing the
    nature of the self. By the grace of the master, the dull and the silent son
    of that couple revealed himself to be a great and wise sage. The master
    felt happy and taking him as disciple, named him Hastamalaka.

    From freeindia.org

    More Advaita writings on Allspirit

     

     

  • Chao-Chou – Etiquette, and Hell

    From: The Roaring Stream

    Edited by Foster and Shoemaker

    One day the Prince Governor of [the] Prefecture came with
    the royal princes and scholars to visit the temple. Remaining
    seated, the Master inquired, “Great Prince, have you
    understanding of this? The Prince replied, “No, I cannot
    grasp it.”

    The Master said, “Since my youth I have kept a vegetarian
    diet and my body is already aged. Even if I see people, I have
    no strength to descend from the Ch’an seat.”

    The Prince felt great admiration for the Master. The next
    day he sent a general to the Master with a message, and the
    Master came down from the seat in order to receive him.

    Afterwards the Master’s attendant said, “Master, you did
    not come down from the Ch’an seat even when you saw the
    great Prince coming to visit you. Why did you descend from
    it for the general who came to see you today?” The Master
    replied, “My etiquette is not your etiquette. When a
    superior class of man comes, I deal with him from the Ch’an
    seat; when a middle grade of man comes, I get down to deal
    with him; and for the dealings with men of low grade, I step
    outside the temple gate….”

    Someone asked, “Master, will you enter into Hell?”
    The Master said, “[I’ll be] the first to enter it.”
    The man said, “Why should a great and good Ch’an master
    enter Hell? The Master said, “Who would transform you
    through the teaching if I had not entered it?”

    More Zen writings on Allspirit

     

     

  • When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted

    By Rudyard Kipling

    1892 – L’Envoi To The Seven Seas

    When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
    When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
    We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two,
    Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
    And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair;
    They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair.
    They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
    They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

    And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
    Andd no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
    But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
    Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

    Read more poems from Rudyard Kipling

    Index of poets on Allspirit