A ZEN STORY

The Zen masters tell a story about the nature of real religious commitment.The monk Tetsugen made the goal of his life the printing of the Buddha's sutras onto Japanese woodblocks. It was an enormous and expensive undertaking and just as he collected the last of the funds he needed, the Uji River overflowed and left thousands homeless. So Tetsugen spent all the money he'd collected on the homeless and began his fundraising again. But the very year he managed to raise the money for a second time, an epidemic spread over the country. This time, Tetsugen gave the money away to care for the suffering. It took 20 more years to raise enough money to print the scriptures in Japanese.Those printing blocks are still on display in Kyoto. But to this day, we're told, the Japanese tell their children that Tetsugen actually produced three editions of the sutras and that the first two editions — the care of the homeless, and the comfort of the suffering — are invisible but far superior to the third.Clearly, the Zen masters know what we know: Witness, not theory, is the measure of the spirituality we profess. What we do because of what we say we believe is the real mark of genuine spirituality.

(Source: Sr Joan Chittister—NCR)