Question
How much importance does Zen give the Tipitaka texts?
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
All the masters have read them and often use their stories as metaphors. Here is a story that could easily answer the previous two questions. Long ago—almost every story begins with ‘long ago’ and almost always concerns the Buddha’s previous lives, when he was a bodhisattva—long ago, then, the people of a frontier kingdom did not know donkeys. They heard someone say that donkey milk was excellent, but none of them knew what it was. So they obtained a donkey and wanted to milk it. The first tried milking its head, another its ear, another its foot, and the last began milking its genitals. Each also thought he would be the first to obtain milk and drink it. They all exhausted themselves with no result, except the last, who cried out that he had attained satori when he saw milk gush from the donkey’s genitals. Needless to say, he became everyone’s laughingstock…
Kosen