A monk asked Keisan (Ch‘i-shan), “When relations are dissolved, all is reduced to emptiness; but where is emptiness reduced?” The master called out to the monk, and the monk responded, “Yes,” whereupon the master called his attention, saying, “Where is emptiness?” Said the monk, “Pray, you tell me.” Keisan replied, “It is like the Persian tasting pepper.” While the one light is an etiological question as long as its origin is the point at issue, the questions here referred to are teleological because the ultimate reduction of emptiness is the subject for solution. But as Zen transcends time and history, it recognises only one beginningless and endless course of becoming. When we know the origin of the one light, we also know where emptiness ends. (Ch. N., [7].) [f127] Another time a monk was told, “Hold on to your poverty!” Nan-yin Yegu’s (Nan-yüan Hui-yü) answer to his poverty-stricken monk was more consoling, “You hold a handful of jewels yourself.” The subject of poverty is the all-important one in our religious experience—poverty not only in the material but also in the spiritual sense. Asceticism must have as its ground-principle a far deeper sense than to be merely curving human desires and passions, there must be in it something positive and highly religious. “To be poor in spirit,” whatever meaning it may have in Christianity, is rich in signification for Buddhists, especially for Zen followers. A monk, Sei-jei (Ch‘ing-shi), came to Sozan (Ts‘ao-shan), a great master of the Sōtō school in China, and said, “I am a poor lonely monk: pray have pity on me.” “O monk, come on forward!” Whereupon the monk approached the master, who then exclaimed, “After enjoying three cupfuls of fine _chiu_ (liquor) brewed at Ch‘ing-yüan, do you still protest that your lips are not at all wet?” As to another aspect of poverty, cf. Hsiang-yen’s poem of poverty. [f128] An analogous story is told of Sekito Kisen (Shih-t‘ou Hsi-ch‘ien) who is grandson in faith of the sixth patriarch. The story is quoted elsewhere. [f129] When this is literally translated, it grows too long and loses much of its original force. The Chinese runs thus: _hao li yu ch‘a t‘ien ti hsüan chüeh_. It may better be rendered, “An inch’s difference and heaven and earth are set apart.” [f130] That is, Ts‘ao-ch‘i, where the sixth patriarch of Zen used to reside. It is the birthplace of Chinese Zen Buddhism. [f131] Does this not remind us of an old mystic who defined God as an unutterable sigh? [f132] A monk asked Hsüan-sha, “What is the idea of the National Teacher’s calling out to his attendant?” Said Hsüan-sha, “The attendant knows well.” Yün-chü Hsi commented on this: “Does the attendant really know, or does he not? If we say he does, why does the National Teacher say, ‘It is you that are not fair to me’? But if the attendant knows not, how about Hsüan-sha’s assertion? What would be our judgment of the case?”