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Main Index
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"THOUGH THE BUDDHA IS NOT HOLY, HE CAN STILL RADIATE THE LIGHT."
The old man felt a little embarrassed, but he didn't say anything. This was absolutely new: "This young man has got something new now since he has come back. His quality has changed. And sometimes he utters statements which can mean much, which may not mean anything. He may have just learned them somewhere. Or, who knows whether he has had some insight, some satori?" The old man watched and waited.
Again, one day, while the old man was reading a sutra near a paper-covered window, a bee tried desperately, with all its strength, to fly out of the room through the paper but was unable to get through.
Shen Tsan, seeing this. said, "The world is so vast and wide that you may easily set yourself free in it. Why, then, do you foolishly bore into the old, rotten paper?"
Now, this is very meaningful. It has two meanings. The old man is reading his old book, and the bee is trying to get out by the paper-covered window -- in Japan they make paper curtains. And Shen Tsan says, "The world is so vast and wide that you may easily set yourself free in it. Why, then, do you foolishly bore into the old, rotten paper?" And he sang a GATHA:
"While the empty door is open wide
How foolish is to try to get out
By thrusting against the window!
Alas! How can you
Raise your head above the slough
By putting your nose against the old, rotten paper
For a hundred years?"
And the old man is getting to be nearabout a hundred years old. Now this is too much.
Hearing this remark, the old man laid down his book and said to Shen Tsan, "For quite a few times now, you have made unusual remarks. From whom did you gain your knowledge while you were away from home?"
Shen Tsan replied, "I have reached the state of peaceful rest through the grace of Master Pai Chang. Now I have come back home to pay my debt of gratitude to you."
The old teacher then prepared a great festival in his young disciple's honour, summoned the monks in the monastery to the assembly hall, and besought Shen Tsan to preach the dharma to all. Whereupon Shen Tsan ascended
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