Life.  We can always enjoy pure happiness when we are united with nature, quite forgetful of our poor self.  When you look, for example, into the smiling face of a pretty baby, and smile with it, or listen to the sweet melody of a songster and sing with it, you completely forget your poor self at that enraptured moment.  But your feelings of beauty and happiness are for ever gone when you resume your self, and begin to consider them after your own selfish ideas.  To forget self and identify it with nature is to break down its limitation and to set it at liberty.  To break down petty selfishness and extend it into Universal Self is to unfetter and deliver it from bondage.  It therefore follows that salvation can be secured not by the continuation of individuality in another life, but by the realization of one’s union with Universal Life, which is immortal, free, limitless, eternal, and bliss itself.  This is easily effected by Zazen.

9.  Zen and Supernatural Power.

Yoga[FN#250] claims that various supernatural powers can be acquired by Meditation, but Zen does not make any such absurd claims.  It rather disdains those who are believed to have acquired supernatural powers by the practice of austerities.  The following traditions clearly show this spirit:  “When Fah Yung (Ho-yu) lived in Mount Niu Teu[FN#251] (Go-zu-san) he used to receive every morning the offerings of flowers from hundreds of birds, and was believed to have supernatural powers.  But after his Enlightenment by the instruction of the Fourth Patriarch, the birds ceased to make offering, because be became a being too divine to be seen by inferior animals.”  “Hwang Pah (O-baku), one day going up Mount Tien Tai (Ten-dai-san), which was believed to have been inhabited by Arhats with supernatural powers, met with a monk whose eyes emitted strange light.  They went along the pass talking with each other for a short while until they came to a river roaring with torrent.  There being no bridge, the master bad to stop at the shore; but his companion crossed the river walking on the water and beckoned to Hwang Pah to follow him.  Thereupon Hwang Pah said:  ’If I knew thou art an Arhat, I would have doubled you up before thou got over there!’ The monk then understood the spiritual attainment of Hwang Pah, and praised him as a true Mahayanist.”  “On one occasion Yang Shan (Kyo-zan) saw a stranger monk flying through the air.  When that monk came down and approached him with a respectful salutation, he asked:  ’Where art thou from?  ‘Early this morning,’ replied the other, ‘I set out from India.’  ‘Why,’ said the teacher, ‘art thou so late?’ ‘I stopped,’ responded the man, ‘several times to look at beautiful sceneries.’  Thou mayst have supernatural powers,’ exclaimed Yang Shan, ’yet thou must give back the Spirit of Buddha to me.’  Then the monk praised Yang Shan saying:  ’I have come over to China in order to worship Manyjucri,[FN#252] and met unexpectedly with Minor Shakya,’ and, after giving the master some palm leaves he brought from India, went back through the air.’"[FN#253]