Hofuku said, “There is a man now passing behind the Buddha Hall, and he knows this is Tom, this is Dick, or this is Harry. There is a man passing before the Buddha Hall. Somehow or other he sees nothing and nobody. Tell me, where is the profit and loss of Buddhism?”
A monk said, “Because he distinguishes things badly, it means he can’t see.”
Hofuku said, “Kwatz!” Then he said, “If this is the Buddha Hall, he can’t see.”
The monk said, “If it wasn’t the Buddha Hall, he could see all right!”
Hofuku said, “It is just because of the Buddha Hall that he can see anything.”

On another occasion, a monk said to Bokushu, “I beg you to expound to me the great meaning of Buddhism.”
Bokushu said, “You bring it to me, and I’ll expound it.”
The monk said, “Please tell me!”
Bokushu said, “When we break the eastern hedge, we must mend the western fence.”

A monk asked Joshu, “What is this eye of the one who never sleeps?”
Joshu said, “The physical eye of the ordinary man.” He added, “Though he may be said not yet to have the spiritual eye, the physical eye may be considered to be the same thing.”
The monk asked, “What is the eye of the one who sleeps?”
Joshu said, “The buddha eye; the eye of the law is the eye of him who sleeps.”

And once a monk asked Tendo, “What is the eye that lacks nothing in its practical application to life?”
Tendo answered, “It is just like blindness.”

Maneesha, before I answer and discuss the profound sutra you have placed before me, I have to deal with something urgent, but non-essential. Tomorrow will be too late, so I have to deal with it today.

I used to think that idiots don’t grow, they always remain idiots. Today I found that they grow – they become more idiotic. The whole credit goes to that old goat of Puri, the Shankaracharya. For almost two weeks he had been insisting that no untouchable, no sudra could enter the temple of Nath Dwara – it would destroy the purity of thousands of years; no sudra has ever entered it.

He even challenged me to a discussion on the point; and he asserted in a press conference that he was ready to be arrested but he won’t allow any untouchable to enter the temple of Nath Dwara. But in those ten days, from every nook and corner of the country, he has been bombarded. He was hoping that at least the orthodox would support him, but they have remained silent.

No intelligent man can support him. Today, seeing that the situation is getting out of hand, he made the statement: “I have been misrepresented.”

For ten days continuously, hundreds of newspapers in all the thirty languages of this country have been misrepresenting him, and he has been silent. Now he has come with a new statement and the statement is, “I never said that harijans, the untouchables, cannot enter Nath Dwara. I said they do not need to enter Nath Dwara: they are God’s people.” – the word harijan means God’s people – “And they don’t have to go to any temple, God will come to them himself.”