[f152] The full passage is: “He who seeks learnedness gets daily enriched. He who seeks the Tao is daily made poor. He is made poorer and poorer until he arrives at non-action (_wu wei_). With non-action, there is nothing that he cannot achieve.” (Chap. 48.) [f153] Na vāsanair bhidyate cit na cittaṁ vāsanaiḥ saha, Abbinnalakshaṇaṁ cittaṁ vāsanaiḥ pariveshtitarṁ. Malavad vāsanā yasya manovijñāna-sambhavā, Pata-śuklopamaṁ cittaṁ vāsanair na virājate. Yathā na bhāvo nābhāvo gaganaṁ kathyate mayā, Ālayaṁ hi tathā kāya bhāvābhāva-vivarjitaṁ. Manovijñāna vyāvṛittaṁ cittaṁ kālusbya varjitam, Sarvadharmāvabodhena cittaṁ buddhaṁ vadāmyaham. _The Laṅkāvatāra_, p. 296. [f154] Not an ordinary question asking enlightenment, but one that has a point in it showing some understanding on the part of the inquirer. All those questions already quoted must not be taken in their superficial or literary sense. They are generally metaphors. For instance, when one asks about a phrase having no shadow, he does not mean any ordinary ensemble of words known grammatically as such, but an absolute proposition whose verity is so beyond a shadow of doubt that every rational being will at once recognise as true on hearing it. Again, when reference is made to murdering a parent or a Buddha, it has really nothing to do with such horrible crimes, but as we have in Rinzai’s sermon elsewhere, the murdering is transcending the relativity of a phenomenal world. Ultimately, therefore, this question amounts to the same thing as asking “Where is the one to be reduced, when the many are reduced to the one?” [f155] This means Buddha who is supposed by Buddhists to have been the owner of a golden-coloured body, sixteen feet in height. [f156] Generally after a sermon the monks come out and ask various questions bearing on the subject of the sermon, though frequently indifferent ones are asked too. [f157] See the article on the “History of Zen Buddhism,” p. 149 et seq. [f158] For detail see “Practical Methods of Zen Instruction.” [f159] Cf. also “History of Zen Buddhism” where reference is made to the Northern and Southern school of Zen under the fifth patriarch in China. [f160] See for detail p. 177, “History of Zen.” [f161] According to Fariduddin Attar, A.D. 1119–1229, of Khorassan, Persia, Cf. Claud Field’s _Mystics and Saints of Islam_, p. 123 et seq. [f162] Underhill—_Mysticism_, p. 369. [f163] After this book went to the press, I have come across an old edition of the spiritual cow-herding pictures, which end with an empty circle corresponding to the eighth of the present series. Is this the work of Seikyo as referred to in Kakuan’s Preface? The cow is shown to be whitening here gradually with the progress of discipline. I may have an occasion later to reproduce this edition.