“O you, followers of Truth, show yourselves here independent of all objects, I want to weigh the matter with you. For the last five or ten years I have waited in vain for such, and there are no such yet. They are all ghostly existences, ignominious gnomes haunting the woods or bamboo-groves, they are elfish spirits of the wilderness. They are madly biting into all heaps of filth. O you, mole-eyed, why are you wasting all the pious donations of the devout! Do you think you deserve the name of a monk, when you are still entertaining such a mistaken idea [of Zen]? I tell you, no Buddhas, no holy teachings, no discipling, no testifying! What do you seek in a neighbour’s house? O you, mole-eyed! You are putting another head over your own! What do you lack in yourselves? O you, followers of Truth, what you are making use of at this very moment, is none other than what makes a Patriarch or a Buddha. But you do not believe me, and seek it outwardly. Do not commit yourselves to an error. There are no realities outside, nor is there anything inside you may lay your hands on. You stick to the literal meaning of what I speak to you, but how far better it is to have all your hankerings stopped and be doing nothing whatever!” etc., etc. This was the way Rinzai wanted to wipe out all trace of God-consciousness in the mind of a truth-seeker. How he wields Thor-like his thunder-bolt of harangue! XI The state of mind in which all traces of conceptual consciousness are wiped out is called by the Christian mystics poverty, and Tauler’s definition is: “Absolute poverty is thine when thou canst not remember whether anybody has ever owed thee or been indebted to thee for anything; just as all things will be forgotten by thee in the last journey of death.” The Zen masters are more poetic and positive in their expression of the feeling of poverty, they do not make a direct reference to things worldly. Sings Mumon (Wu-mên)[7.37]: “Hundreds of spring flowers; the autumnal moon; A refreshing summer breeze; winter snow: Free thy mind of all idle thoughts, And for thee how enjoyable every season is!” Or according to Shuan (Shou-an)[7.38]: “At Nantai I sit quietly with an incense burning, One day of rapture, all things are forgotten, Not that mind is stopped and thoughts are put away, But that there is really nothing to disturb my serenity.”