This is the psychological aspect of “secret virtue.” When it is religiously considered, it is to regard and use the world reverentially and gratefully, feeling as if one were carrying on one’s shoulders all the sins of the world. An old woman asked Jōshu,[7.34] “I belong to the sex that is hindered in five ways from attaining Buddhahood; and how can I ever be delivered from them?” Answered the master, “O let all other people be born in heaven and let me, this humble self, alone continue suffering in this ocean of pain!” This is the spirit of the true Zen student. There is another story illustrating the same spirit of longsuffering. The district of Jōshu where this Zen master’s monastery was situated and where he got his popular title, was noted for a fine stone-bridge. A monk one day came up to the master and asked,[7.35] “We hear so much of the splendid stone-bridge of Jōshu, but I see here nothing but a miserable old rustic log-bridge.” Jōshu retorted, “You just see the rustic log-bridge, and fail to see the stone-bridge of Jōshu.” “What is the stone-bridge then?” “Horses go over it, asses go over it,” was Jōshu’s reply. This seems to be but a trivial talk about a bridge, but considered from the inner way of looking at such cases, there is a great deal of truth touching the centre of one’s spiritual life. We may inquire what kind of bridge is represented here. Was Jōshu speaking only of a stone-bridge in his monastery premises, which was strong enough for all kinds of passengers over it? Let each one of us reflect within himself and see if he is in possession of one bridge over which pass not only horses and asses, men and women, carts heavy and light, but the whole world with its insanities and morbidities, and which is not only thus passed over but quite frequently trampled down and even cursed,—a bridge which suffers all these treatments, good as well as despised, patiently and uncomplainingly. Was Jōshu referring to this kind of bridge? In any event we can read something of the sort in the cases above cited. But this Zen spirit of self-suffering ought not to be understood in the Christian sense that a man must spend all his time in prayer and mortification for the absolution of sin. For a Zen monk has no desire to be absolved from sin, this is too selfish an idea, and Zen is free from egotism. The Zen monk wishes to save the world from the misery of sin, and as to his own sin he lets it take care of itself, as he knows it is not a thing inherent in his nature. For this reason it is possible for him to be one of those who are described as “they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use this world as not abusing it.”