One day a young monk at Ryutaku-ji had a kensho, and his teacher, seeking to deepen this experience, led him on a long walk up Mount Fuji. Although the monk had seen the great snow mountain many times before, he truly perceived it now for he first time [like the monk who truly perceived that the sun was round] and all the way up, he kept exclaiming over the harmony and colors of the wildflowers, the flight of birds, the morning light in the fresh evergreens, the sacred white pine cone! "See how it is made? This stone, it's so... so stone! Isn't it wonderful? Do you hear the nightingale? It is a miracle! Oh! Fuji-san!"
Muttering a little, the old master hobbled onward, until finally his student noticed his long silence and cried out, "Isn't it so? Aren't these mountains, rivers and great earth miraculous? Isn't it beautiful?" The old man turned on him. "Yes-s-s," he said forcefully. "But what a pity to say so!"
Peter Matthiessen, excerpt from Essential Zen, 1994, by Kazuaki Takahashi & Tensho David Schneider
Submitted February 19, 2018 at 09:29AM by WanderingRonin77 http://ift.tt/2oga22j
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