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simple warrior came to Hakuin to ask where is heaven and where is hell. He had not come to learn any doctrine. He wanted to know where the gate was so he could avoid hell and enter heaven. And Hakuin replied in a way only a warrior could understand. If a brahmin had been there, scriptures would have been needed; he would have quoted the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran, then a Brahmin would have understood. All that exists for a brahmin is in the scriptures; scriptures are the world. A brahmin lives in the word, in the verbal. If a businessman had been there, he would not have understood the answer, the response Hakuin gave, the way he acted with this warrior. A businessman always asks "What is the price of your heaven? What is the cost? How can I attain it? What should I do? How virtuous should I be? What are the coins? What should I do so heaven can be attained?" He always asks for the price.
I have heard one beautiful story -- it happened in the beginning when God created the world. God came to earth to ask different races about the ten commandments, the ten rules of life. The Jews have given so much significance to those ten rules -- Christians also, Mohammedans also. All these religions are Jewish, the source is the Jew, and the Jew is the perfect businessman.
So God came to ask, he came to the Hindus and asked, "Would you like to have ten commandments?" The Hindus said, "What is the first? We must have a sample. We don't know what these ten commandments are." God said, "Thou shalt not kill."
The Hindus said, "It will be difficult. Life is complex, killing is involved. It is a great cosmic play: there is birth, death, fighting, competition. If all the competition is taken away the whole thing will become flat, dull. We don't like these commandments -- they will destroy the whole game."
Then he went to the Mohammedans and said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." He also gave them one example -- they had also asked for a sample. The Mohammedans said, "This will be difficult... life will lose all beauty. At least four wives are needed. You call it adultery, but this is all that life can give, all that a virtuous
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