In the previous kung-an I told that student that a yellow flower was neither a flower nor yellow. In this respect I am not a very good Shih-fu because, having said this, I saved him years of hard work. Afterwards I asked him, "Was it easy for you to enter the door?" He answered, "No." "Would it have been possible without Shih-fu?" "Impossible." Actually I have been generous to students, giving them hints and guidelines to help them enter the door quickly, to give them some small taste of Ch'an. The levels these students have reached however, are actually very shallow. Therefore, I constantly remind them of this and warn them against pride. Even though their faith is established, they will regress unless they continue to practice hard.

On the sixth day of a retreat I gave another student a hint which actually was taken from a remark by a Reverend Jih-Chang, who was helping me with the retreat: "An egg and a rock knocked against each other; the rock was broken and the egg remained whole." Unfortunately, the student was unable to make use of this hint to reach a deeper level. Another example of this type of kung-an is: "A man is walking on a bridge; the bridge flows but the water is still." This type is somewhat puzzling, but if we were to go up another level, the kung-ans would again become very normal.