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Samurai

The World Is In The Making
Our assertion is far from assuming that life is now complete,...

Man Is Not Good-natured Nor Bad-natured But Buddha-natured
We have had already occasion to observe that Zen teaches Bud...

Zen After The Downfall Of The Ho-jo Regency
Towards the end of the Ho-Jo period,[FN#90] and after the dow...

The Courage And The Composure Of Mind Of The Zen Monk And Of The Samurai
Fourthly, our Samurai encountered death, as is well known, wi...

The Parable Of The Monk And The Stupid Woman
The confused or unenlightened may be compared with a monk and...

Life In The Concrete
Life in the concrete, which we are living, greatly differs fr...

There Is No Mortal Who Is Non-moral Or Purely Immoral
The same is the case with the third and the fourth class of p...

Pessimistic View Of The Ancient Hindus
In addition to this, the new theory of matter has entirely ov...

Nature Is The Mother Of All Things
Furthermore, man has come into existence out of Nature. He i...

Life Consists In Conflict
Life consists in conflict. So long as man remains a social a...

Origin Of Zen In India
To-day Zen as a living faith can be found in its pure form on...

The Beatitude Of Zen
We are far from denying, as already shown in the foregoing ch...

The Absolute And Reality Are But An Abstraction
A grain of sand you, trample upon has a deeper significance t...

Enlightenment Implies An Insight Into The Nature Of Self
We cannot pass over, however, this weighty problem without sa...

The Honest Poverty Of The Zen Monk And The Samurai
Secondly, the so-called honest poverty is a characteristic of...

Real Self
If there be no individual soul either in mind or body, where ...

Scripture Is No More Than Waste Paper
[FN#107] Zen is not based on any particular sutra, either of...

The Progress And Hope Of Life
How many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life...

A Sutra Equal In Size To The Whole World
The holy writ that Zen masters admire is not one of parchment...

Epicureanism And Life
There are a good many people always buoyant in spirit and mir...

The Fourth Patriarch And The Emperor Tai Tsung (tai-so)

The Third[FN#40] Patriarch was succeeded by Tao Sin (Do-shin), who
being initiated at the age of fourteen, was created the Fourth
Patriarch after nine years' study and discipline. Tao Sin is said
never to have gone to bed for more than forty years of his
patriarchal career.[FN#41] In A.D. 643 the Emperor Tai Tsung
(627-649), knowing of his virtues, sent him a special messenger,
requesting him to call on His Majesty at the palace. But he declined
the invitation by a memorial, saying that be was too aged and infirm
to visit the august personage. The Emperor, desirous of seeing the
reputed patriarch, sent for him thrice, but in vain. Then the
enraged monarch ordered the messenger to behead the inflexible monk,
and bring the head before the throne, in case he should disobey the
order for the fourth time. As Tao Sin was told of the order of the
Emperor, he stretched out his neck ready to be decapitated. The
Emperor, learning from the messenger what had happened, admired all
the more the imperturbable patriarch, and bestowed rich gifts upon
him. This example of his was followed by later Zen masters, who
would not condescend to bend their knees before temporal power, and
it became one of the characteristics of Zen monks that they would
never approach rulers and statesmen for the sake of worldly fame and
profit, which they set at naught.

[FN#40] He died in A.D. 606, after his labour of thirteen years as
the teacher.

[FN#41] He died in A.D. 651-that is, forty-five years after the
death of the Third Patriarch.

Next: The Fifth And The Sixth Patriarchs
Previous: The Second And The Third Patriarchs

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