Shen-hui spoke to the Sixth Patriarch in a public meeting. He was asking, “When you do zazen , is it clear?” When I sit, I can ask, “How is your zazen?” There is a big difference when one who doesn’t have zazen asks. The Sixth Patriarch said, “If you don’t understand, you will ask about it forever.” [Reading from another text] “The Master says, ‘My seeing is self-knowing… If your seeing is self-knowing also, you don’t need to expect my delusion.’” It means, if you bring deluded mind, you cannot see. And if you see, you wouldn’t bring this deluded question. In the beginning, we often have this kind of unprepared question. It’s a very sharp question: “When you sit in meditation, do you see your mind or not?” This “seeing” is the same word as kensho. This ken means seeing, not with two eyes, but with one eye. In other words, “Are you an enlightened person or not, doing this zazen?” The young monk was very sharp, but this sharp question had to be asked not because of the master, but because of the young monk’s own problem. Pain is a feeling, while seeing relates with the eye or mind. Pain relates, not just with mind, but with skin, muscle, bone, too. Both of these questions, asking whether your zazen is clear or not clear, true or not true, whether you feel pain or no pain, are on a dualistic level of understanding. In Buddhist thinking, “dualism” refers to birth and extinction, arising and corruption. People often ask, “Is he enlightened or not?” “Is Kobun enlightened or not? I don’t think so!” But the problem is not whether Kobun is or not, but whether you are, or not! If you say, “He is not enlightened,” you are not enlightened. When you measure, it is like putting a one-foot ruler up against a huge rock, and saying it is one-foot tall. Actually, it is a huge rock. If someone says you are deluded, that means he is deluded. He doesn’t see what you actually are. If you really see another person’s problem, you feel, “This is my problem.” If you cannot feel another’s pleasure, or their pain, even if you listen to and see them, you are a total stranger. You can imagine what is going on in this conversation between Hui-neng and Shen-hui. One is seventy years old, the other is a little boy of thirteen. How do you feel when the master hits Shen-hui? Does he hit him very hard, not too hard? You can feel that you are Hui-neng and you hit him not too hard, and not too soft. When you don’t feel the other’s pain or pleasure, it’s like a narrow entrance which only one person can go through, but three persons, all at once, want to go through. It is “me first.” The three of them need to become very slender, but they don’t want to! So if you don’t die, you cannot go through this very narrow gate. If you die, you can go through and come out really alive. What shall you do? This is a very traditional expression of how our mind works. Not only Zen, but all of Mahayana Buddhism speaks of store-consciousness.