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about Hui-neng?
Twelve years passed, and then one day the Master declared, "My time has come and I will be leaving this world, so I have to choose a disciple as my successor. Anybody who thinks himself ready, capable of becoming my successor, should write four lines in front of my door to show his understanding. The greatest scholar went there in the night and wrote four lines, beautiful lines, really beautiful the very essence of the SECOND principle. You cannot reach higher through the mind than that. He wrote: "The mind is like a mirror. Dust gathers on it. Clean the dust, and you know what is." Perfectly true, absolutely okay. What more can there be?
The whole monastery was agog. People were discussing, debating whether the Master would choose this man as the successor or not. And everybody was trying to improve upon it, but nobody could find anything wrong in it. There was nothing wrong....
That is one of the most difficult things about the intellect. What is wrong in a plastic flower? Nothing is wrong. In a way -- in many ways -- it may be better than a real flower. A real flower is born in the morning and by the evening it is gone. A plastic flower is more stable, more permanent -- gives the idea of the eternal! The real flower is momentary. The real flower is born and dies, and the plastic flower knows no death. It is the closest that you come to the eternal. And what is wrong in it? It can have as much color as the real -- can have more color because it is in your hands to make it so. And you can make it perfumed too; there is no problem about it. But something basic is missing; it is dead.
Nobody could find anything wrong. And people were trying to improve it, but they were all intellectuals. You cannot improve more than that; this is the last point the mind can reach. And it seems logical: "The mind is like a mirror. Dust gathers on the mirror, and then it cannot reflect" -- that's what has happened to the mind.
Then two, four monks were discussing it, and they passed Hui-neng, who was doing his work in the kitchen. He heard it -- they were talking about these beautiful lines, the essential of all the scriptures --
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