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there are things which cannot be said without metaphors -- and those are the great things and great experiences in life, which cannot be expressed without metaphors, without poetry, without symbols.
RINZAI RESPONDED, "THE GREAT COMPASSIONATE ONE HAS A THOUSAND HANDS AND A THOUSAND EYES. WHICH IS THE TRUE EYE? SPEAK, SPEAK!"
Perhaps you know; that's why you are asking.
It is one of the greatest fallacies with people who have accumulated some knowledge -- all borrowed from scriptures, from teachers, from missionaries -- all rubbish, because unless it is your experience, it is not true.
Rinzai must have looked into this man, Ma-yu. He seems to be a scholar who has been reading scriptures; hence the question. He already knows the answer -- the answer from the scriptures, not the answer from his own experience. That's why he said,
"THE GREAT COMPASSIONATE ONE HAS A THOUSAND HANDS AND A THOUSAND EYES. WHICH IS THE TRUE EYE? SPEAK, SPEAK!"
He wanted to expose Ma-yu: "Your knowledge is not your knowing. Your knowledge is all borrowed."
Don't depend on borrowed knowledge. That simply burdens you, makes you heavy, binds you into chains, imprisons you in words, and you forget completely your wings and the whole sky that is yours. But chained with religions and churches and scriptures, you cannot fly across the sun into the faraway blue sky; you cannot become one with the cosmos.
MA-YU PULLED THE MASTER DOWN OFF THE HIGH SEAT AND SAT ON IT HIMSELF.
It is a very beautiful anecdote. Because Rinzai did not answer, and on the contrary started asking him,
"WHICH IS THE TRUE EYE? SPEAK, SPEAK!"
He thought, "This fellow does not know even the scriptures. He is not a scholar." To show this, he pulled the master down off his high seat and sat on it himself. That's what scholars have been doing always.
Scholars are the arch enemies of those who have experienced the truth. That very experience of the truth makes the scholars feel so inferior that they become almost enraged. They lose all rationality and sensibility. They become insane.
MA-YU PULLED THE MASTER DOWN OFF THE HIGH SEAT AND SAT ON IT
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