Zen Stories

47. Accurate Proportion
Sen no Rikyu, a tea-master, wished to hang a flower basket on a column. He asked a carpenter to help him, directing the man to place it a little higher or lower, to the right or left, until he had found exactly the right spot. That's the place,' said Sen no Rikyu finally.

The carpenter, to test the master, marked the spot and then pretended he had forgotten. Was this the place? 'Was this the place, perhaps?' the carpenter kept asking, pointing to various places on the column. But so accurate was the tea-master's sense of proportion that it was not until the carpenter reached the identical spot again that its location was approved.

48. Black-Nosed Buddha
A nun who was searching for enlightenment made a statue of Buddha and covered it with gold leaf. Wherever she went she carried this golden Buddha with her.

Years passed and, still carrying her Buddha, the nun came to live in a small temple in a country where there were many Buddha’s, each one with its own particular shrine.

The nun wished to burn incense before her golden Buddha. Not liking the idea of the perfume straying to the others, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend only to her statue. This blackened the nose of the Golden Buddha making it especially ugly.

50. Ryonen's Clear Realization
The Buddhist nun known as Ryonen was born in 1797. She was a granddaughter of the famous Japanese warrior Shingen.

Her poetical genius and alluring beauty were such that at seventeen she was serving the empress as one of the ladies of the court. Even at such a youthful age fame awaited her.

The beloved emperor died suddenly and Ryonen's hopeful dreams vanished. She became acutely aware of the impermanency of life in this world. I was then that she desired to study Zen.

Her relatives disagreed, however, and practically forced her into marriage. With a promise that she might become a nun after she had borne three children. Ryonen assented. Before she was twenty-five she had accomplished this condition.

Then her husband and relatives could no longer dissuade her from her desire. She shaved her had took the name of Ryonen which means to realize clearly, and stated on her pilgrimage.

She came to the city of Edo and asked Tetsugyu to accept her as a disciple. At one glance the master rejected her because she was too beautiful. Ryonen then went to another master, Hakuo. Hakuo refused her for the same reason, saying that her beauty would only make trouble.

Ryonen obtained a hot iron and placed it against her face. In a few moments her beauty had vanished forever. Hakuo then accepted her as a disciple.

Commemorating this occasion. Ryonen wrote a poem on the back of a little mirror: In the service of my Empress I burned incense to perfume my exquisite clothes, Now as a homeless mendicant I burn my face to enter a Zen temple.

When Ryonen was about to pass from this world she wrote another poem:
Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn.
I have had enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.