• Home
  • Tag Archives:  Good anecdotes
  • Fuketsu’s silence and words

    A monk asked Fuketsu, “Without words or without transgressing silence, how can one be unmistakably one with the universe?” Fuketsu said, “I often think of March in Konan (Southern China). The birds…

  • Publishing the Sutras

    Tetsugen, a devotee of Zen in Japan, decided to publish the sutras, which at that time were available only in Chinese. The books were to be printed with wood blocks in an…

  • No work, no food

    Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labour with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds and pruning the trees. The pupils felt sorry to…

  • Muddy Road

    Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once traveling together down a muddy road. It was raining heavily in those parts. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk…

  • Mokusen’s hand

    Mokusen Hiki was living in a temple in the province of Tamba. One of his adherents complained of the stinginess of his wife. Mokusen visited the adherent’s wife and showed her his…

  • How grass and trees become enlightened

    During the Kamakura period, Shinkan studied Tendai six years and then studied Zen for seven years; then he went to China and contemplated Zen for thirteen years more. When he returned to…

  • Happy Chinaman

    Anyone walking about Chinatowns in America will observe statues of a stout fellow carrying a linen sack. Chinese merchants call him Happy Chinaman or Laughing Buddha. This Hotei lived during the T’ang…

  • The forgetful genius

    Albert Einstein’s name is synonymous with ‘genius.’ We know he was a simple soul but it is hard to believe that the propounder of the most complex Theory of Relativity and quantum…