The sixth patriarch, Hui-nêng (Yeno), insists on this in a most unmistakable way when he answers the question: “As to your commission from the fifth patriarch of Huang-mei, how do you direct and instruct others in it?” The answer was: “No direction, no instruction there is; we speak only of seeing into one’s Nature and not of practising dhyana and seeking deliverance thereby.” Elsewhere they are designated as the “confused” and “not worth consulting with,” they that are empty-minded and sit quietly having no thoughts whatever; whereas “even ignorant ones, if they all of a sudden realise the truth and open their mental eyes, are after all wise men and may attain even to Buddhahood.” Again when the patriarch was told of the method of instruction adopted by the masters of the Northern School of Zen, which consisted in stopping all mental activities, quietly absorbed in contemplation, and in sitting cross-legged for the longest while at a stretch, he declared such practises to be abnormal and not at all to the point, being far from the truth of Zen, and added this stanza which was quoted elsewhere: “While living one sits up and lies not, When dead, one lies and sits not; A set of ill-smelling skeleton! What is the use of toiling and moiling so?” When at Demboin, Baso used to sit cross-legged all day and meditating. His master, Nangaku Yejo (Nan-yüeh Huai-jang, 677–744), saw him and asked,[5.8] “What seekest thou here thus sitting cross-legged?” “My desire is to become a Buddha.” Thereupon, the master took up a piece of brick and began to polish it hard on the stone nearby. “What workest thou on so, my master?” asked Baso. “I am trying to turn this into a mirror.” “No amount of polishing will make a mirror of the brick, sir.” “If so, no amount of sitting cross-legged as thou doest will make of thee a Buddha,” said the master “What shall I have to do then?” “It is like driving a cart; when it moveth not, wilt thou whip the cart or the ox?” Baso made no answer. The master continued: “Wilt thou practice this sitting cross-legged in order to attain dhyana or to attain Buddhahood? If it is dhyana, dhyana does not consist in sitting or lying; if it is Buddhahood, the Buddha has no fixed forms. As he has no abiding place anywhere, no one can take hold of him, nor can he be let go. If thou seekest Buddhahood by thus sitting cross-legged, thou murderest him. So long as thou freest thyself not from sitting so,[f106] thou never comest to the truth.”