Mumonkan

CASE 32. A "PAGAN" ASKS BUDDHA A "pagan" asked Buddha, "With words, with silence, will you tell me (the Way)?" Buddha silently kept meditating. The "pagan" bowed and thanked the Buddha, saying, "With the compassion you have cleared away the clouds of my mind and have made me enter into the awakening." After he left, Ananda asked the Buddha what he had attained. The Buddha said, "A good horse runs even a shadow of the whip." Mumon's Comments: Ananda was Buddha's disciple but his understanding was not like that pagan. Now tell me, "How afar are the disciple and the non-disciple?" Treading on the sharp edge of a sword, Running over jagged ice. Not climbing on the ladder, Letting your hands off the cliff.