The magistrate said, “That will do. If that monk – I know him – if he can say anything in favor of you, you will be released.”

The monk was called and he was asked about the thief. The monk said, “This man is a very beautiful, simple man. One night, by mistake he entered into my house.”

The magistrate said, “What do you mean, ‘by mistake’?”

“I said ‘by mistake’ because the doors were open and everybody knows that there is nothing in that hut but me and my blanket. And I offered my blanket to him. He was a guest. He tried not to take it, I had almost to force him. And he is so mannerly that he said to me, ‘Thank you, sir’ and he closed the door. This man is a very nice man, you should not harass him.”

Because that monk said, “You should not harass him,” the thief was released. He could not believe it! Neither did he understand that night, nor could he understand the saint’s statements in court in his favor. He followed the saint.

The monk said, “Are you coming now?”

He said, “Yes, I am coming now.”

He said, “You unnecessarily wasted two years. I was telling you to get into a partnership from the very beginning. You had nothing to lose; I lost my blanket. Now what do you want?”

He said, “Now I want to be in your service, to sit by your side and listen to what you are saying. Now I can see that you are not an ordinary man; that you don’t belong to the masses and the crowd, that you are utterly different.”

The Zen monk said, “If you can see the difference, then you are accepted. Be my fellow traveler. I was so sad that night when you could not find anything in the house. You had given me so much respect by entering my hut, because who enters poor people’s huts? People go to steal in palaces. You raised my status to a king, I was grateful. But I had nothing else to give to you but an old blanket, and when you left I wept because, ‘If that man had told me a few days before, I could have collected some things.’

“And sitting on my window sill, I saw the moon in the sky and I wrote a poem. I have not told anybody, but with you I will share it. It is a beautiful poem. It says: My heart weeps, cries, because I could not offer a guest anything worthwhile. If it were in my power, I would have given him the whole moon. But the moon is not in my power.”

It is a beautiful piece. Such a man has no unconscious at all. It is pure consciousness.