My brief foray into the realm of Ch'an was sparked by remembering a line from an ancient poem that Master Sheng-Yen had given me three years before. For one year I had only the Chinese. The following year Shih-fu gave me the translation, which was something like this: "The bridge is flowing and the stream is standing still. Beneath the water, the moon is shining, and fish are leaping in the sky." It had been just a bizarre Zen poem to me then, but now, another year later, it became an igniting flame. I felt I might be going slightly crazy. I felt like a train that had left its tracks and was flying through the sky. I saw the world in the opposite way from the habitual view of the conventional mind. I was sure that stones floated up into the sky and feathers plunged to the bottom of the ocean. The oxen were eating rice with chopsticks and the farmers were grazing on grass. The children on the street were wielding the incense board and Shih-fu was throwing firecrackers in the zendo. I laughed and laughed and laughed, while the swift flow of "Who-am-l" continued in the background. At one point, two cars on the street had a humorous conversation with their horns. I started laughing again, but this time the other meditators in the zendo began laughing with me. My laughter wasn't just subjective. The world really is this funny.

The Zen teaching-story came to mind about the master who killed a cat because none of his students could demonstrate the spirit of Ch'an in order to save it. Later, when his principal student returned from a journey, the Master asked him how he would have saved the cat. The student placed his own grass sandles on his head and walked out. The Master remarked: "If he had been here, the cat would have been saved." I saw clearly the spirit of this action. Our habitual way of viewing the world must be reversed. Sandles belong on the head, not on the feet.