[FN#238] These instances are quoted from Zen-rin-rui-shu.

If you want to secure Dhyana, let go of your anxieties and failures in the past; let bygones be bygones; cast aside enmity, shame, and trouble, never admit them into your brain; let pass the imagination and anticipation of future hardships and sufferings; let go of all your annoyances, vexations, doubts, melancholies, that impede your speed in the race of the struggle for existence.  As the miser sets his heart on worthless dross and accumulates it, so an unenlightened person clings to worthless mental dross and spiritual rubbish, and makes his mind a dust-heap.  Some people constantly dwell on the minute details of their unfortunate circumstances, to make themselves more unfortunate than they really are; some go over and over again the symptoms of their disease to think themselves into serious illness; and some actually bring evils on them by having them constantly in view and waiting for them.  A man asked Poh Chang (Hyaku-jo):  “How shall I learn the Law?” “Eat when you are hungry,” replied the teacher; " sleep when you are tired.  People do not simply eat at table, but think of hundreds of things; they do not simply sleep in bed, but think of thousands of things."[FN#239]

[FN#239] E-gen and Den-to-roku.

A ridiculous thing it is, in fact, that man or woman, endowed with the same nature as Buddha’s, born the lord of all material objects, is ever upset by petty cares, haunted by the fearful phantoms of his or her own creation, and burning up his or her energy in a fit of passion, wasting his or her vitality for the sake of foolish or insignificant things.

It is a man who can keep the balance of his mind under any circumstances, who can be calm and serene in the hottest strife of life, that is worthy of success, reward, respect, and reputation, for he is the master of men.  It was at the age of forty-seven that Wang Yang Ming[FN#240] (O-yo-mei) won a splendid victory over the rebel army which threatened the throne of the Ming dynasty.  During that warfare Wang was giving a course of lectures to a number of students at the headquarters of the army, of which he was the Commander-in-chief.  At the very outset of the battle a messenger brought him the news of defeat of the foremost ranks.  All the students were terror-stricken and grew pale at the unfortunate tidings, but the teacher was not a whit disturbed by it.  Some time after another messenger brought in the news of complete rout of the enemy.  All the students, enraptured, stood up and cheered, but he was as cool as before, and did not break off lecturing.  Thus the practiser of Zen has so perfect control over his heart that he can keep presence of mind under an impending danger, even in the presence of death itself.

[FN#240] The founder of the Wang School of Confucianism, a practiser of Meditation, who was born in 1472, and died at the age of fifty-seven in 1529.