”The following is an account of the Zen master Ryokan by Tekiken, the adopted son of one of Ryokan's students. It illustrates the wonderful union of the relative and absolute levels in the openheartedness of loving feeling:
”When the Zen Master went out, children would follow him. Sometimes they would shout at him loudly, and the Master would shout back in surprise, throwing up his hands, reeling backward and almost losing his balance. Whenever the children found the Master, they were always ready to do this. Ordinary people frowned on this behavior. My late father once questioned the Master about it. The Master laughed and told him: "When the children are happy, it makes me happy. The children are happy, and I'm happy too, everyone is happy together, and so I do it all the time. There's no truer happiness than this!" This happiness of the Master was itself a manifestation of the ultimate truth.”
