When a man, whose marriage was in trouble, sought his advice, the Master said, “You must learn to listen to your wife.”
The man took this advice to heart and returned after a month to say he had learned to listen to every word his wife was saying.
Said the Master with a smile, “Now go home and listen to every word she isn’t saying.”
Master is not an exact translation of any title from the countries from which Zen traditions emanate, where titles vary widely, even in different traditions from the same country. In popular culture, the term has been used to refer to any number of public figures in sports and entertainment, denoting a person who demonstrates detachment and control in stressful situations. It was sometimes adopted by figures in the spiritual counter-culture of the 1970s and 1980s who had little or no actual Zen training (“Zen Master Rama,” “Osho”,) presumably to generate positive associations or legitimacy.