Accurate Proportion
Sen No Rikyu, a tea-master, wished to hang a flower basket on a column. He asked a carpenter to help him, directing the man to place it a...
A Message
Tanzan wrote sixty postal cards on the last day of his life, and asked an attendant to mail them. Then he passed away. The cards read: I...
A Parable
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a...
A Mother's Advice
Jiun, a Shogun master, was a well-known Sanskrit scholar of the Tokugawa era. When he was young he used to deliver lectures to his...
A letter to a dying man
Bassui wrote the following letter to one of his disciples who was about to die: “The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never...