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it was as alive as any cat can be.
Now there are on sale in the world markets small pyramids. You just sit under the pyramid for an hour and you will see some changes; you are no more in a hurry, you don't have any tension. The stupa has done something, but it is still a mystery.
The Buddhists also have made stupas: in India, Bodhgaya, where Buddha became enlightened... in Sanchi, where many buddhas became enlightened. But nobody seems to be interested except in their architecture. Studying the architecture is not the way to find the mystery of why these stupas were made in a certain way.
In India, in Tibet, in China, in Japan, in Ceylon -- wherever Buddhism went, these stupas, these memorials were raised to give an indication that nobody dies; only the body and the mind are left behind and you open your wings of consciousness. And for the first time when all the shutters are broken the whole blue sky is your empire.
Kyozan studied with many masters, but either they were not masters... and certainly he was not ready to be a disciple. The moment he saw Isan, suddenly a new breeze, a new fragrance passed through him.
They met on a small footpath on the mountain. He could not resist... this man smells like sandalwood and has such a light around him, such an at-easeness.
He turned and asked Isan, "Can you accept me as a disciple?"
Isan looked at him. He said, "I have never rejected anyone, that would be humiliation -- although I am aware, looking at you, that it is going to be a long task. But if you are ready to go on a long pilgrimage with me, perhaps that which can happen may now happen."
Isan had one thousand disciple-monks, and they were all puzzled that, having such a great scholarly assembly, he had chosen a farmer, uneducated, who had not even heard the names of the Buddha's sutras. "Why has he become so interested in him?" And they were great scholars with a fine discipline who had been with him for years -- and, "This is a newcomer, a villager."
Isan said to his other disciples, "Today he is not ready, he is just a seed. But tomorrow you will know why I have chosen him. I am trying to serve two
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