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day he will go to a mountain top far away and establish a hermitage, and he will blossom with such beauty that even the buddhas will be ashamed and the patriarchs will feel jealous.
It is a very strange way of appreciation, but Isan seems to be a man of tremendous insight. Not a single word has been passed but he has looked into the very depths of Tokusan and his potentiality. And he is not a man to waste time with someone whose potentiality leads him somewhere else.
In ancient Egyptian mysticism there is a proverb, that it is not the disciple who chooses the master, it is the master who chooses the disciple. How can a poor disciple decide? On what grounds can he choose a master? Only a master can choose a disciple. From his height he can see the potential. Isan could see that Tokusan was not a bodhisattva, but an arhat. He would find the truth alone, and would become a great master, but a master of very few people. And certainly he would not become a disciple, that was not his destiny.
Isan showed tremendous insight. Just by watching ordinary gestures, he could see the very inner depth of Tokusan. And what he said really happened. Tokusan finally became a great master on his own. He went to many more masters after Isan, but everywhere he behaved in such a way that nobody could accept him. Every master he visited could see the great potential in him, but he had to find it himself, he would not take anybody's help, it was simply not in his nature.
And when Tokusan himself became a master he was really on a mountaintop, all alone, but his name, his glory, spread like wildfire -- another man has blossomed into the totality of buddhahood -- and hundreds of people came to him.
Isan is saying that a man of clarity and enlightenment can see through you; he can see through what you are and what you can become. And a man like Isan will not interfere, out of compassion; he will not say a single word to a man who can become a master on his own sooner or later. He will let him find it. Any help to such a man will be a distraction.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, MAYAOKU, NANSEN AND ANOTHER MONK WERE ON WHAT IN THOSE TIMES WAS CALLED A "NATURE
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