These fellows with the third-chakra problems, who think they have arrived. “I am the avatar.” “I have the truth.” It is like advertising Up with a sign for Down. Develop a mind, the Diamond Sutra says, that alights nowhere.
I myself take Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen as an exemplar. He attained enlightenment (ha!) in 795, at the age of seventeen, stayed put for the next forty years until his Zen Master died, then went out on a twenty-year pilgrimage to hone his insight. Only when he was eighty years old did he feel ready to teach. He died at the age of 120. His eloquence was so profound and subtle, legend says, that light seemed to play about his lips as he spoke.
One day Chao-chou said to the assembly, “Even the word ‘Buddha’ makes me want to throw up.”
A monk bowed and asked, “Then how do you teach people?”
Chao-chou said, “Buddha! Buddha!”