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Take-away lessons from anecdotes about Zen Masters Joshu, Hyakujo and Bankei, as told by Osho in the series Roots and Wings – by Phoebe

Zen Master Joshu – The Fourth Talk

The fourth talk is about the Zen master Joshu who asked a new monk he met in the monastery, ‘Have I seen you before?’ The monk replied, ‘No Sir.’ ‘Then have a cup of tea,’ Joshu said. Turning to another monk he asked him, ‘Have I seen you before?’ ‘Yes Sir, of course you have,’ he responded. ‘Then have a cup of tea,’ said Joshu.

Later the manager of the monastery asked Joshu why he’d made the same offer of tea to both monks at which Joshu bellowed, ‘Manager, are you still here?’ ‘Of course master,’ he replied – and Joshu said quietly, ‘Have a cup of tea.’

It was unexpected that shout. It interrupted the manager’s train of thoughts about the future and shocked him awake. But this was why he’d joined the Zen monastery in the first place. To outsiders however, such as the visitor in the next chapter, the questions a Zen master asks sound absurd, and the learning situations that he puts people in seem to defy common sense.

I imagine that, back in the 1970s, this book of Zen tales must have puzzled many of the Western sannyasins who found their way to Osho. Probably most of them wouldn’t have come across Zen Buddhism yet, and I was among their number. It was reading Roots and Wings that gave me my first taste of Zen, which is why it has pride of place on my bookshelves.

When I first read it, it reminded me of the absurd theatre of the 1950s. At that time I watched performances of Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot and Eugene Ionesco’s The Rhinoceros in a London theatre that left me with feelings of bewilderment. They portrayed an illogical, insecure world that was disconcerting. In general, the drama of the absurd had the effect of shaking our confidence in the everyday reality that the mind believes in. And today my take-home message from Joshu is, ‘Time to wake up to real reality!’

Zen Master Hyakujo – The Fifth Talk

In the 5th talk we meet the Zen master Hyakujo who called his monks together one day and told them he needed to choose a monk to be the chief of a new monastery. The monks watched him place a water jug on the ground, and then he asked them if they were able to tell him what it was without using its name.

The chief monk, who was expecting to get the position, said, ‘No one can call it a wooden shoe.’ Then another said, ‘It’s not a pond as it can be carried.’ The cooking monk, however, simply kicked over the jar of water and stormed out, whereupon Hyakujo announced, ‘The cooking monk will become the master of the new monastery!’

We are left asking ourselves why him. I suggest it’s because the two monks who spoke up had prepared logical answers in their minds, and from their point of view the cook’s action of angrily kicking the pot over was illogical. It didn’t follow rationally. However, if instead of thinking about the scene we imagine it happening, it’s clear that the cooking monk was the only one of the three to respond in the moment. His action of kicking over the pot was then an appropriate reply that spoke louder than words.

My take-away lesson from Hyakujo is pay attention to the moment and practise remaining in the here and now. Unless we are present to the present, we go through our lives missing reality which is only found in the moving moment. Osho gives us the following advice:

“If you forget the result completely, if there is not even a flicker in the mind for the result, not a single vibration moving into the future, when you have become a silent pool here and now, everything happens!”

“Just this moment exists, absolutely consistent for there can be no comparison. There is no past, no future. Only this moment is. How can you compare? If you live in this moment there will come a consistency which is not of a system, which is of life, which is of the energy itself. There will be an inner consistency of your very being, not of your mind.” ¹

Zen Master Bankei – The Sixth Talk

In the sixth talk, the Zen master Bankei is visited by a priest from a sect that believes in the power of miracles and the repetition of holy words to become enlightened. He boasted to Bankei of a miracle performed by their leader and asked him what miracles he could perform. Bankei replied, ‘Only one. When I’m hungry I eat and when I’m thirsty I drink!’

Osho’s lesson for us here is about becoming aware of our ambition and the ego that drives it. It’s one that really strikes home for me. Looking back on my life, I recognise it as one of the most challenging steps I needed, and still need, to take, and so cherish this advice:

“The only miracle, the impossible miracle, is to be just ordinary. The longing of the mind is to be extraordinary. The ego thirsts and hungers for the recognition that you are somebody. Somebody achieves that dream through wealth, somebody else achieves that dream through power, politics.

“Somebody else can achieve that dream through miracles, jugglery, but the dream remains the same – I cannot tolerate being nobody! And this is a miracle, when you accept your nobodiness, when you are just as ordinary as anybody else, when you don’t ask for any recognition, when you can exist as if you are not existing – to be absent is the miracle!

“People come to me and ask how to drop the ego. I tell them who will drop it? If you try to drop it you will be the ego. . . I know only one miracle – to let nature have its course, to allow it. Whatsoever is happening, don’t interfere, don’t come in the way, and suddenly you will disappear.” ²