Ep. 9

Beloved acharya, nansen found two groups of monks squabbling over the ownership of a cat.

Nansen went to the kitchen and brought back a chopper. He picked up the cat and said to the monks, "if any of you can say a good word, you can save the cat." not a word was said, so nansen cut the cat in two and gave half to each group.

When joshu returned that evening, nansen told him what had happened. Joshu said nothing. He just put his sandals on his head and walked out.

Nansen said, "if you had been there, you could have saved the cat."

Season 4

Using traditional Zen stories and responding to seekers' questions, Acharya shows how man must first be grounded in himself before he can fly into the sky of consciousness. Acharya takes the reader from subjects as diverse as food, jealousy, businessmen and enlightenment, to how to know if one needs a master, the barriers we create through fear, and gratitude.

"Be rooted in the earth so that you can stretch to the sky; be rooted in the visible so that you can reach into the invisible. Don't create duality and don't create any antagonism. If I am against anything, I am against antagonism. I am against being against anything; I am for the whole, the complete circle. The world and God are not divided anywhere. There is no boundary: the world goes on spreading into God and God goes on spreading into the world. Really, to use two words is not good but language creates problems. We say the creator and the created, we divide. Language is dualistic; in reality there is no created and no creator, only creativity, only a process of infinite creativity. Nothing is divided. Everything is one -- undivided."