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nor extraordinary, neither knowledgeable nor ignorant.
This beyondness is his nirvana. Just to think about it you will feel an immense peace. Just visualize it and you will feel a great silence descending on you. And this is only visualization -- what will happen in actuality if you come to the middle? You cannot conceive the ecstasy of it, the blissfulness of it, the benediction of it.
I have chosen Ta Hui to help you understand the difference between the teacher and the master, because many religions have lost their masters. For example, Jainism in India has had no masters, no enlightened persons at all, for centuries -- only teachers.
Without an enlightened being, the religion loses its soul. It is only the small stream of enlightened people that keeps the religion breathing and its heart beating, that keeps it alive, flowering.
And one enlightened person is not just a singular phenomenon; he spreads his illumination all around. Wherever he is, he carries a certain energy field, and whoever is receptive will be pulled into the energy field. The teacher has no energy field. He is just repeating mechanically like a parrot.
But Ta Hui was certainly a great teacher, because he collected... he went to dozens of enlightened masters. He was so young when he was initiated into monkhood, and he gathered like a bee gathers honey from thousands of flowers. So on the one hand he is very rich; he has brought so much honey from different flowers. But on the other hand he is very poor; he has not contributed anything from his own being. But I am happy that at least in the end, at the very end of his life, he became enlightened. His small verse is certainly of great beauty:
BIRTH IS THUS -- just a happening in a dream.
DEATH IS THUS -- just a happening in a dream.
VERSE OR NO VERSE
WHAT IS THE FUSS?
He has entered into a realm of ultimate serenity and silence. It does not matter whether it is life or death. It does not matter whether he is following the tradition of writing a verse, or not writing it.
Then he just let go of the writing brush and passed on...passed on into eternal existence.
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