Shifu visited the dentist on Thursday to have his teeth cleaned.
While lying down on the dentist's chair, giving up his fate to the ultrasound drills, he thought that there must be a Dharma lesson here.
Shifu asked the experienced dentist, "A Buddhist can participate in a Zen-7 meditation retreat and possibly get enlightened, even if he doesn't meditate everyday. Can a person just brush his teeth diligently for seven days and slack off for the rest of the year?"
The answer was a resounding, "NO!"
To maintain good and healthy teeth we should brush our teeth after every meal. Which many people do. If we meditated after, or before, every meal, we'd be a lot closer to enlightenment, too. Being persistent in meditation is no harder than brushing your teeth.
Right?
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This is Jian Hu Shifu's skillful teaching at its finest. I did not recognize it as a teaching at first, then its Koan quality suddenly dawned on me, and I already had the answer all along.
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