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Hema came to see me. She may not even be aware of the Buddhist rule that when you face a Master you have to bow down three times, but she bowed three times. She was laughing all the time because she could not understand what was happening. She was puzzled, she must have felt a little ridiculous, and everybody else started laughing. Something had takes possession of her being. Now this was not a formality. What happened to Hema was a natural outpouring, a spontaneity. But in this ugly world every spontaneous thing becomes reduced to a formality.
It used to happen to people when they would come to see a Buddha -- they would bow down three times. People started following, imitating.
In the first meeting with the Master, Huineng, Yoka walked around the Master three times without bowing and merely shook his Buddhist staff with iron rings.
The Master said 'A SHRAMANA embodies the three thousand rules of deportment and the eighty thousand minute moral rules.
Now look what happens to religion. Buddha has said that 'Be a law unto yourself. Be a lamp unto yourself. There is no other law.' But Buddhist scriptures are full of rules -- three thousand rules of deportment; even to remember them is difficult. And eighty thousand minute moral rules... and a Buddhist monk is expected to fulfil all of them.
Huineng said 'From where does your honour come, may I ask, with your overweening self-assurance?' Do you think Huineng was saying 'You have to follow all these rules'? No, not at all, he was simply provoking. This is the push. He was hitting hard, he was hitting at this new arrival who was just on the verge -- as everybody else is. You can misunderstand it, then you have postponed your enlightenment. Yoka could have retorted 'What nonsense! One has to be spontaneous. And I had never thought that a man like you would expect those stupid rules -- three thousand or eighty thousand...' He could have retorted, and missed.
Yoka replied 'Birth and death is a problem of great moment; all changes ceaselessly.' It looks unrelated; it is not. He is saying 'Any moment I can die. Do you want me to follow all that ritual -- eighty thousand rules? And
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