..续本文上一页e help you can to encourage the person. I think that”s very important. We need to encourage each other. Quite often in the dharma people who know nothing are the ones who keep trying to encourage the young students, the newer students in the zendo, and the people who know something don”t say anything. So, it”s good to sort of come out and not spare the dharma assets as the precept goes.

　　Lin-chi doesn”t falter, in a sense, when he realizes he doesn”t understand the teacher. The teacher”s shocking him. The teacher”s presenting the shocking nature of the Tao to him. Just `Kaatz!", just the Tao itself, just the tree, just breakfast. But he understands something is going on that he doesn”t understand. That”s as much as he gets to. Then he waits with it. And that sense of waiting with it, `not knowing whether I”m at fault or not,” is very precious and important. When something happens to you that seems difficult, that waiting in that way is very good because that allows the dharma to come in and that allows it to become a sacred occasion. When you don”t immediately adopt an attitude that this is bad or this is good. It”s a very important moment and very closely related to being in harmony with the Tao. If you don”t know yet, you don”t know and that”s okay. Sometimes its foggy; it”s not always clear sunlight.

　　And then he faithfully follows. What his teacher does is send him on a pilgrimage so that he can digest this, so that it can start to percolate through him and you can see that all this time, the question, what is going on

　　 what is the true nature of the Buddha dharma

　　 what does that striking mean

　　 So the question was working in him as he just walked along through the back roads of old China. Then he had the candor, he didn”t fake it and say, "Well, I was an important person at Huang-po”s monastery," which a lot of people do when they come to see me, actually. He didn”t try to impress, he just said candidly exactly what had happened. If people are learning something, it”s quite hard to get people to tell me exactly what happened without lots of overlay and lots of interpretation on it. He had this very good mind where he”d just be honest and he was--without either taking blame of blaming others. And then, of course, Ta Yu comes in and jumps on him, grabs hold of him and shakes him by speaking about Huang-po”s grandmotherly kindness.

　　I ask you a question: What if at that moment Lin-chi had not gotten enlightened

　　 What then

　　 Another koan.

　　What Ta Yu does is he realizes that he has been somebody helping out Huang-po and the head monk and he doesn”t try to cling to the student at all and he”s obviously the sort of student that a teacher would love to have. He knows it”s right to send him back. He just listens to the Tao and he sends him back. So he sends him back to Huang-po and says, "You have Huang-po for a teacher."

　　Then he comes back and Huang-po continues, he doesn”t just let that go when Lin-chi comes back. He presses on him and asks him why he came back. And here”s the story. And Lin-chi already is starting to sort of challenge his teacher. He has joined the democracy of the dharma. He slaps his teacher quite fearlessly showing his dharma. After all Huang-po had slapped him, too. Very free. And gave a shout. And Huang-po just accepts it by saying, "Attendant, get this lunatic out of here and take him to the monk”s hall." Which is his kind of blessing on him, really.

　　When Lin-chi came to die, he acknowledged his great student by saying, "Who”d have thought the essence of my true dharma would be inherited by this blind donkey." This kind of expression holds out the possibility of having a pure expression without clinging to it. This is the kind of praise that doesn”t confuse you so that you cling to the praise. It”s unattache…

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