A monk asked Tosu (Tou-tzu), a Zen master of the Tang period: I understand that all sounds are the voice of the Buddha. Is this right? The master said, That is right. The monk then proceeded: Would not the master please stop making a noise which echoes the sound of a fermenting mass of filth? The master thereupon struck the monk.
The monk further asked Tosu: Am I in the right when I understand the Buddha as asserting that all talk, however trivial or derogatory, belongs to ultimate truth. The master said, Yes, you are in the right. ,- The monk went on, May I then call you a donkey? The master thereupon struck him.
To conceive every sound, every noise, every utterance one makes as issuing from the fountainhead of one Reality, that is, from one God, is pantheistic, I imagine. For he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things (Acts 17:25); and again, For in him we live, and move, and have our being( Acts 17:28) If this be the case, a Zen masters hoarse throat echoes the melodious resonance of the voice flowing from the Buddha golden mouth, and even when a great teacher is decried as reminding one of an ***, the defamation must be regarded as reflecting something of ultimate truth. All forms of evil must be said somehow to be embodying what is true and good and beautiful, and to be a contribution to the perfection of Reality. To state it more concretely, bad is good, ugly is beautiful, false is true, imperfect is perfect, and also conversely. This is, Indeed, the kind of reasoning In which those indulge who conceive the God-nature to be immanent in all things.
The masterful Tosu knew, as all Zen masters do, the uselessness of making any verbal demonstration against such a logician. For verbalism leads from one complication to another; there is no end to it. The only effective way, perhaps, to make such a monk as this one realize the falsehood of his conceptual understanding is to strike him and so let hi experience within himself the meaning of the statement, 0ne in All and AI1 in One. The monk was to be awakened from his logical somnambulism. Hence Tosus drastic measure.