Publisher’s Foreword

TREVOR LEGGETT collected many teaching stories from the Indian Yoga tradition and from the Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions drawn from various sources both ancient and modern: for example they may be from an old temple magazine, folk stories, from the oral tradition or sometimes from his own experience. These stories can provide inspiration to beginners as well as those with some knowledge and experience of Yoga and Zen. Their function is to strike a spark and if they do so they should be pondered daily for some weeks to find the deeper points. The author explains this in more detail in the introduction to the companion volume to this book, ‘Encounters in Yoga and Zen - Meetings of Cloth and Stone’ which can be found on the Trust website tlayt.org at Audio tracks - Going Further into a Story.

THE PICTURES in this book were brushed by Jacques Allais and generously given to Trevor Leggett for this book. The pictures are in the Suiboku style in which Jacques Allais was an expert. The style gives a hint for the focusing of meditation practice, providing the perfect complement to Trevor Leggett’s text.

Lotus Lake

The Magistrate

A TEACHER of the Yoga of the Bhagavad-Gita came to the district and set up a school in a village there. When this was reported to the local magistrate (the chief administrative officer for the district), he was displeased. He was a follower of a Western philosopher who held that traditional religion and its compulsive morality was the cause of many of the ills of man.

The magistrate had a great love for the people of the district, and worked night and day to bring them to what he saw as modern and progressive views. He therefore put many obstacles in the way of the yoga teacher, and for a time was successful in turning public opinion against him.

When he heard that the school was also teaching secular subjects to the local children (admittedly poorly served by the present arrangements, because of the poverty of the district), he briefed the school inspector to apply the most stringent tests to the teaching methods. The latter, however, reported favourably, and in fact two of the yoga teacher’s disciples had been school-teachers and were teaching very ably for a tiny salary. In five years, three of the pupils of this school obtained state scholarships to go on to a high school in the capital, and then to the university. Such a thing had never happened before.

The magistrate’s attitude began to soften. Though he never even came to meet the yoga master, he used his influence to help him in various ways, and indirectly conveyed to the group that if they were in difficulties, they could approach him through a designated intermediary. The disciples concluded that though the magistrate could hardly reverse his previous stance, he had in fact become a religious devotee in private.

After some years he fell ill. He went to the capital for a major operation, but returned little better, and it was generally assumed that he had come home to die. The teacher sent a disciple, with no instructions except to present himself. He was refused admission. He sat down on the ground in an inconspicuous place not far from the door. As night came on, his body shivered in the cold, and a servant who saw him brought a mat and a straw coat; he then reported to his master that the disciple was still waiting.

Late in the night, the master asked, “Is he still there?”

“Yes,” was the answer. “I gave him some food.”

“Well, let him in,” ordered the sick man. “I have decided to see him.”

As the disciple bowed on the threshold, the magistrate said irritably, “You’ve come to preach to me, I suppose.”

“I won’t say a word unless you tell me to,” promised the brahmachari.

“Well, I have decided that I may as well tell you—in fact, I must tell you in fairness—that I have never believed that superstitious stuff you are propagating among the people. And I don’t believe it now. But I have seen that your teacher could get people to cooperate, and to work and study, on the basis of pleasing God; and I had found that they just couldn’t see clearly enough when I explained to them the same things, on the basis of enlightened self-interest. And I concluded that perhaps the religious phase is a necessary one, to get them moving. Afterwards, as they become better informed, they will discard it. So I gave some help to your efforts; the dogmas do seem to be of some immediate benefit to the people, and ultimately they are bound to destroy themselves.

“Now I’ve told you. I felt suddenly that your master was entitled to know, to prevent any misunderstandings later. I hope it isn’t too much of a shock to you. I don’t suppose you have any text to cover this case, have you?”

“My Lord, we have,” the disciple told him. “It is in the Gita, where the Lord says that in whatever form people worship Him, that same faith He makes unwavering.”

There was a long silence.

The magistrate said feebly, “Is there any other text that comes to your mind?”

The brahmachari replied softly, “Yes—He sees, who sees the Lord standing in all beings, the undying in the dying.”

Another silence.

“Anything else?” The magistrate’s voice was very weak.

The brahmachari came and knelt by the bed with his palms joined. “O my Lord, you cannot tease me any more. I see you clearly now.”

A great surprise came over the magistrate’s face; and then he died.

The brahmachari called the servant, and told him, “Your master is gone now, and well gone.” The servant stood in the doorway looking toward the dead man for a little. Then he said in a choked voice, “He was a great man. Yes, and he was a good man too. They said he was strict and hard. Well, he was; he was strict and hard. I should know that; I served him for twelve years. But it was for our own good, and I know that too. And he was much stricter with himself, and much harder on himself. He was so anxious that he shouldn’t leave anything undone, so anxious. I don’t think I ever saw him smile, he was so anxious.”

He took a step toward the bed, and peered toward the face.

“But tell me—I’m not seeing very well just now—that’s a smile there, isn’t it?” He caught the brahmachari’s arm. “It’s true, isn’t it? He’s smiling now, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” the brahmachari told him. “He’s smiling now.”

Do Good

“NOT MUCH thanks in this world when you do a kindly action,” grumbled a disciple. “They at once try to find something wrong with it, and if they can’t find something wrong with it, they find something wrong with you. Seems to make them feel better somehow.”

“I heard a good saying in one of the devotional schools,” remarked a senior. “Apparently their teacher used to say: ‘Do good, and be abused.’ But he told them that the resistance and abuse against good deeds was like the bow-wave when a ship is moving forward strongly; in a way it is a confirmation, and should not be resented too much.”

“Yes, I know, I know. It’s all very clever and elevating, but the fact is that when spiteful things are actually being said, when a well-meant action is deliberately twisted to seem self-seeking—it’s a bit different then. I haven’t got the patience to listen to all that venomous stuff.”

“We have the saying in our own school: Do Good and Go. They tell us not to hang about, either for praise or blame.”

“Still, one’s bound to hear something even as one goes … and one remark can be as wounding as twenty.”

“Well, I suppose in your case we’ll have to amend the saying. Try this then: Do Good and Run!”

Self-Examination

TWO FRIENDS who belonged to a group practising interior training were given the practice of self-examination. “At the end of the day, sit down for a few minutes and try to see where you have gone wrong: make attempts to correct the faults.” One of them, a desperately conscientious man, raised the point when they next had a meeting with the teacher.

“I find myself overwhelmed when I do self-examination,” he said. “I feel absolutely crushed. It seems to have been all blunders and meanness and weakness. I can’t get rid of the thought of them afterwards, either. Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

The teacher said, “There is another way for people like you. You need not do formal self-examination. Whenever you think of your mistakes, turn your mind on to the Lord. Create vividly in your mind the scenes from the life of His incarnations. This will free you. Make friends with the lion, and you will not be bothered by jackals.” Then he turned to the other, and asked him how he found the practice.

“Oh, I don’t have trouble at all,” he replied. “I’ve come to realize that humility is the secret of self-examination. If the thought comes up that I have failed in virtue, I just think, the Lord did not give me the strength. If the idea comes that I have not prayed, I think, He did not give me a devotional nature. If it occurs to me that I have not studied the holy scriptures, to find out how to approach Him, then I say, after all, He did not give me the head for that. When I realize that I have not been very helpful to my fellow men, I think, He did not bless me with loving kindness.

“All I am and all I do and all I think—it is all from Him. What have I to repent of, what have I to correct? It is all His, nothing of mine at all.”

“There might be just one thing of your own in all this,” said the teacher.

“And what is that?”

“Perhaps ... a tiny bit of pride in your own cleverness?”

Last Words

A TEACHER of the Gita Yoga had as a disciple an Englishman brought up to restrain expression of feeling. The teacher approved of this as a basis, but got him to take part in amateur theatricals and public speaking so that there should be some creative expression. The Englishman’s mother was sceptical (though she had been baptized) and often sarcastic about religion. They lived far apart, and when they did meet he never talked about his beliefs and practice. She had a vague idea that he was inclined to some strange Oriental cult, but she would dismiss the subject of religion in a few sharp words if ever it appeared on the conversational horizon. She recognized that he was a good son to her. When finally she fell very ill, he took her into his home to look after in the final stages.

Now the teacher had told this disciple, as he told all of them, not to feel he was giving up the religion into which he had been born. He recommended him to read from the New Testament every day, which he did with slowly increasing interest. Later he took to having a crucifix by his bed during the night.

One day the teacher asked about the mother, and hearing that she was very weak, said, “The Gita declares that the last thought of the dying person may be very important. If when you are there you become aware that your mother is about to die, say into her ear, ‘Jesus loves you.’”

The disciple gulped. Suppose, he thought to himself, Mother didn’t die but recovered for a bit; he could imagine her reaction. Only the week before, a well-meaning friend had sent her a postcard with angels pictured on it, and the inscription below, “When we pass over, they are waiting to greet us on the other side.” His mother had snorted contemptuously, and remarking, “How do they know, I wonder?” told him to throw it in the wastepaper basket.

Then he pondered that after all he had only been told to do it if he knew definitely that she was dying, and he could never be completely certain of that. On the other hand, this had been an instruction from the teacher, so there must be circumstances in which it would apply. His mind wavered to and fro for a long while but in the end he made up his mind to do it.

When the time came, however, and his mother lay dying before him, he found himself so embarrassed that he could not bring the words out. He stood silently and prayed. Afterwards, telling the whole story to another pupil, a close friend, he ended, “I just couldn’t do it. I often worry about it now; I feel it was a big failure, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let Mother go over with her last thought not ‘Jesus loves you,’ but ‘Jimmy’s gone barmy!’ Because that’s what she would have thought.”

Some years later, the Englishman himself died, alone and in the night. He was lying peacefully and there had been no struggle, but it seemed that he had woken before it happened, as he was found holding the crucifix. His friend one day discussed with a senior the story as he knew it, and remarked, “I think our teacher must have made a little miscalculation there, when he told him to say those words ‘Jesus loves you’ to his mother. After all, he must have known Jimmy wouldn’t be able to say them: it was absolutely impossible for someone brought up like him. And it worried him a lot; he often thought how he had failed.”

The senior, a woman, laughed at the story, but added, “Not absolutely impossible, you know. If it had been absolutely impossible, he wouldn’t have worried about it. The Gita says that the Lord is in the heart of every being, so nothing’s absolutely impossible, is it? I agree that our teacher knew it was highly unlikely that he would get over the obstacles and say these words. But the point is, he thought about it often. No doubt there was a feeling of worry, of having failed, but still, he was thinking about it.

“And when he himself woke up in the night and realized that he was dying, and just had the strength to reach for that crucifix, what do you suppose came to his mind? It was those words. He’d failed to say them before, but they didn’t fail him then.”

Anger

IN THE sermon it was remarked in passing that in the Eastern traditions it was generally held that the worst sin was anger leading to injury to others, whereas in Christianity it seemed that sexual license was worse; in English, for instance, the very word immorality had overtones of sexual transgressions.

This part of the sermon was reported to a Christian who lived in the neighbourhood, and he later tackled the preacher on the point, adding, “I get angry myself, but only with good reason, so I don’t regard it as particularly sinful. After all, when Christ drove the money-changers from the Temple, he showed anger, and he was unquestionably right. When I get angry, it’s the same thing.”

The preacher took him outside onto the grass and gave him a big stone. He told him, “Throw this stone on the ground with all your force.” He flung it down and it made a great dent in the ground. The priest removed the stone and said, “Come back when that mark has gone.” It took some weeks before the mark was gradually obliterated by the rains and by people walking over it.

Then the priest said, “This is like your anger. Now take up the stone again.” They went to a still lake and the Christian was asked to throw the stone as hard as he could into the water. It made a tremendous splash, and the ripples went to the edge of the lake. But in five minutes all was completely calm again. The preacher continued, “And that is the anger of a Christ. It is just a passing thing, just for this event, and it doesn’t do any damage. When you struck the ground with your stone, some little insects were killed; but all you have just done here was to disturb the water momentarily, and it was even good for the plants at the edge of the water.”

The Christian was impressed, but did not want to give in so easily, and argued, “You’ve told me that my anger remains, and has lasting effects, whereas His anger is momentary and bears no malice. But still, at the moment of anger, mine is the same as the anger of Christ, isn’t it?”

The priest said, “It may seem so, but it is not really so. Take the example of water again. Suppose a smoothly flowing stream, and suddenly it is dammed by a landslide or something like that. It piles up before the obstacle; it froths and swirls as if in frustration. It looks angry, so to say. But then, it goes round, and soon creates a new channel round the obstacle, and is flowing smoothly as before. There is no permanent mark, and there is no fixed attitude, no posture.”

Habits

“I DON’T see why we are asked to come to meditation and devotion practice classes. Surely the whole point of yoga is to develop the consciousness in the ordinary affairs of life, so we ought to practise them in that field. If we don’t do that, they are basically useless for life.” This sort of objection is very common, especially among ambitious or property-loving disciples. A teacher once answered in this way: