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to smash the face of Kyozan, which would have saved the mirror! But nobody was enlightened enough.
You will come across many incidents, and when you hear about them, just think that you were there; just close your eyes and feel the energy that had gathered in Kyozan's monastery; what would you have done?
It reminds me:
A great Zen master had two wings to his monastery, and he had a beautiful cat. Everybody loved that cat, and everybody claimed that, "Of course the master cannot possess anything, so it belongs to the right wing," or "it belongs to the left wing."
Things became so hot that one day the master had to call the whole assembly of both wings, to say, showing the cat and a sword, "Do you see this cat and this sword? If anybody can answer -- this is a question about this cat and this sword -- if anybody can answer, the cat will belong to him. If nobody answers then the only possible way for me to settle this hot dispute and struggle is to cut the cat in two pieces and divide it between the right wing and the left wing."
A great chill went through the people, but what is the right answer?
Seeing their silence, the master cut the cat in half. He gave a bleeding half to each of the parties. At that very moment Lieh Tzu, who was going to be his successor and had gone to the marketplace for some work, entered in and slapped the master, and said to him, "You old idiot! You unnecessarily killed a beautiful cat."
The master laughed and said, "Lieh Tzu, if you had been here the poor cat would still be alive."
Zen has a language of its own. Most particularly, it needs courage, spontaneity, clarity, and then out of that clarity whatever you do is right.
Issa wrote:
PLUM BLOSSOMS:
MY SPRING
IS AN ECSTASY
Just visualize.
PLUM BLOSSOMS:
MY SPRING
IS AN ECSTASY
If you start looking silently at things, the roses will become your ecstasy, the mountains will become your ecstasy, the naked tree without any leaves will become your ecstasy. The ecstasy is an utter silence, watching, witnessing the tremendous beauty that surrounds you. This beauty is alcoholic.
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