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ZEN BUDDHISM method of the Master's reply. The pupil's mind has a tendency to flow away to the edge of the circle, to escape from "this", and "now". The master brings it back, and the pupil ultimately "sees”. Here is another "incident”. The famous Tokusan was sitting outside his Master's house on the verandah, striving to accomplish Zen. His Master asked from within, "Why don't you come in?" "It is dark," said Tokusan. A candle was lighted and handed to him, but as he was about to take it, the Master blew it out. Tokusan was enlightened.
Sometimes the Master forced the issue with a class of pupils. A Master held out a stick (shippe) to his audience and said, “Call it not a stick; if you do, you assert. Nor deny that it is a stick; if you do, you negate. Without affirmation or denial, speak, speak!” This sudden demand to do something, anything which would burst the tyranny of the opposites, is typical of Zen. Sometimes the Master had a favourite trick, like Rinzai's shout of “Kwats”, which he roared at his thought-entangled followers. And everything had to be emptied from the mind before the Master was satisfied. When a pupil asked his Master, “Zen emphasises the need of the expulsion of every idea. Am I right when I have no idea?” the Master replied, "Throw away that idea of yours." "I have told you that I have no idea. What can I throw away?" Said the Master, "You are free, of course, to carry about with you that useless idea of no idea!”
The Master's method was always concrete; the vague abstraction has no place in Zen. Someone asked a Master, "Summer comes, winter comes. How shall we escape from it?” “Why not go where there is neither winter nor summer?” asked the Master. "And where is
