8.  The Sermon of the Inanimate.

The Scripture of Zen is written with facts simple and familiar, so simple and familiar with everyday life that they escape observation on that very account.  The sun rises in the east.  The moon sets in the west.  High is the mountain.  Deep is the sea.  Spring comes with flowers; summer with the cool breeze; autumn with the bright moon; winter with the fakes of snow.  These things, perhaps too simple and too familiar for ordinary observers to pay attention to, have had profound significance for Zen.  Li Ngao (Ri-ko) one day asked Yoh Shan (Yaku-san):  “What is the way to truth?” Yoh Shan, pointing to the sky and then to the pitcher beside him, said:  “You see?” “No, sir,” replied Li Ngao.  “The cloud is in the sky,” said Yoh Shan, “and the water in the pitcher.”  Huen Sha (Gen-sha) one day went upon the platform and was ready to deliver a sermon when he heard a swallow singing.  “Listen,” said he, “that small bird preaches the essential doctrine and proclaims the eternal truth.”  Then he went back to his room, giving no sermon.[FN#135]

[FN#135] Den-to-roku and E-gen.

The letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, etc., have no meaning whatever.  They are but artificial signs, but when spelt they can express any great idea that great thinkers may form.  Trees, grass, mountains, rivers, stars, moons, suns.  These are the alphabets with which the Zen Scripture is written.  Even a, b, c, etc., when spelt, can express any great idea.  Why not, then, these trees, grass, etc., the alphabets of Nature when they compose the Volume of the Universe?  Even the meanest clod of earth proclaims the sacred law.

Hwui Chung[FN#136] (E-chu) is said first to have given an expression to the Sermon of the Inanimate.  “Do the inanimate preach the Doctrine?” asked a monk of Hwui Chung on one occasion.  “Yes, they preach eloquently and incessantly.  There is no pause in their orations,” was the reply.  “Why, then, do I not hear them?” asked the other again.  “Even if you do not, there are many others who can hear them.”  “Who can hear them?” “All the sages hear and understand them,” said Hwui Chung.  Thus the Sermon of the Inanimate had been a favourite topic of discussion 900 years before Shakespeare who expressed the similar idea, saying: 

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

[FN#136] A direct disciple of the Sixth Patriarch.

“How wonderful is the Sermon of the Inanimate,” says Tung Shan (To-zan).  “You cannot hear it through your ears, but you can hear it through your eyes.”  You should hear it through your mind’s eyes, through your heart’s eyes, through your inmost soul’s eyes, not through your intellect, not through your perception, not through your knowledge, not through your logic, not through