Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Those masters of discerning insight had a perfect command of words, and they used their skill to teach their disciples. Each word and phrase may show a different aspect of Zen, but each is no more than a means—like the woman’s call for her maid, not for an errand but simply so that her lover would hear her voice and know that she was there inside the window. The masters’ words did no harm to their students, and some bright ones grasped the essential beyond those words. But with the passage of time, misunderstandings inevitably occurred. Many stupid people came along, like the man who spent all his time watching the old stump into which a rabbit had run and killed itself—he was waiting for it to happen again. Or the one who dropped his sword into the current from his moving boat and marked the side of the boat to show where it fell, and then searched in the water underneath. Then every five hundred years or so a great master appears in the world who can wipe out all these accumulated evils.’ (West Mountain Evening Talk)