33. She Who Listens

Master Ungan Donjo asks Master Dogo Enchi, "How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use her so many hands and eyes?"

Dogo says, "Like somebody in the night-time reaching back to grope for a pillow."

Ungan says, "I get it! I get it!"

Dogo says, "How?"

Ungan says, "The whole body, all over, is her hands and eyes."

Dogo says, "Nice one! You have expressed eighty or ninety percent of it."

Ungan says, "That is me. How about you, brother?"

Dogo says, "Something being communicated throughout the whole body: that is her hands and eyes."

In saying who She Who Listens is, there have been many voices heard, before and since, but none has been a match for Ungan and Dogo. If we want to learn Listening, we should get to the bottom of what Ungan and Dogo have now said. The one they are talking about, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, is the Bodhisattva Listening to the Sounds of the World. She is also called the Bodhisattva of Listening Spontaneously. We also study her as the father and the mother of all the buddhas. Do not learn that, in comparison with the buddhas, hers is a less mature expression of the truth: she is a Thus-Come, a past Clarifier of the True Sitting-Method.


-- to be continued.