Chwen went upon the platform, struck the desk with a block of wood, and came down.  Pao Chi (Ho-shi), a Buddhist tutor to the Emperor, asked the perplexed monarch:  “Does your Lordship understand him?” “No,” answered His Majesty.  “The lecture of the Great Teacher is over.”  As it is clear to you from these examples, Zen holds that the faith must be based not on the dead Scriptures, but on living facts, that one must turn over not the gilt pages of the holy writ, but read between the lines in the holy pages of daily life, that Buddha must be prayed not by word of mouth, but by actual deed and work, and that one must split open, as the author of Avatamsaka-sutra allegorically tells us, the smallest grain of dirt to find therein a sutra equal in size to the whole world.  “The so-called sutra,” says Do-gen, “covers the whole universe.  It transcends time and space.  It is written with the characters of heaven, of man, of beasts, of Asuras,[FN#13l] of hundreds of grass, and of thousands of trees.  There are characters, some long, some short, some round, some square, some blue, some red, some yellow, and some white-in short, all the phenomena in the universe are the characters with which the sutra is written.”  Shakya Muni read that sutra through the bright star illuminating the broad expanse of the morning skies, when he sat in meditation under the Bodhi Tree.

[FN#13l] The name of a demon.

Ling Yun (Rei-un) read it through the lovely flowers of a peach-tree in spring after some twenty years of his research for Light, and said: 

“A score of years I looked for Light: 
There came and went many a spring and fall. 
E’er since the peach blossoms came in my sight,
I never doubt anything at all.”

Hian Yen (Kyo-gen) read it through the noise of bamboo, at which he threw pebbles.  Su Shih (So-shoku) read it through a waterfall, one evening, and said: 

“The brook speaks forth the Tathagata’s words divine, The hills reveal His glorious forms that shine.”

6.  Great Men and Nature.

All great men, whether they be poets or scientists or religious men or philosophers, are not mere readers of books, but the perusers of Nature.  Men of erudition are often lexicons in flesh and blood, but men of genius read between the lines in the pages of life.  Kant, a man of no great erudition, could accomplish in the theory of knowledge what Copernicus did in astronomy.  Newton found the law of gravitation not in a written page, but in a falling apple.  Unlettered Jesus realized truth beyond the comprehension of many learned doctors.  Charles Darwin, whose theory changed the whole current of the world’s thought, was not a great reader of books, but a careful observer of facts.  Shakespeare, the greatest of poets, was the greatest reader of Nature and life.  He could hear the music even of heavenly bodies, and said: 

“There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, But in his motion like an angel sings.”