There is a story of a starving beggar who came upon a banquet fit for a king. It seemed strange to him because there was no one around. Instead of sitting down to eat, he grew frightened, because he had never seen such sumptuous food. He wondered if perhaps it were a trap, or if someone were giving him a last meal before killing him. The beggar became so scared he ran away without taking a single morsel of food.

A person with weak karmic roots is frightened when he encounters Ch'an teachings, and wonders if he is fit to practice its methods. Unless a person has great courage, he will be too scared to learn and practice, and he will choose to keep his dirty socks rather than attain liberation.

There was a man who had been ill for a long time. He tried many treatments and visited many doctors, but nothing worked. Doctor after doctor told him that he had an incurable disease and only had a short time to live. Then he went to the best doctor in the world. After examining him, the doctor said, "I can cure you." But the man did not believe him. He had been told otherwise too many times. He figured the doctor was playing on his hopes and trying to swindle him out of money. On the way home, he threw away the prescription the doctor had given him.

Some of you have been working with the same method for a long time and you still have not made much progress. Perhaps you are convinced that you will never progress beyond square one. Yesterday, a practitioner told me, "It takes such a long time to reach Buddhahood! And right up to the point of Buddhahood there are still so many karmic obstructions. They say that all karmic obstructions disappear instantly with sudden enlightenment, but I don't believe it. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll be stuck with my vexations for a long time."