Short story: The Zen master's final lesson came from his death

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Hiroshoma Zenkai, was a great Zen master of one hundred and fifty years ago. He was a fisherman too, who liked to catch his fish, early each morning, for the breakfast meal of his fledgling monks, in his monastery. One such morning, he never returned with his fish. The students went to look for him, and they found his body washed up stone dead, on an otherwise empty beach. What had happened to this great master? He had been bitten, it seems, by a sea snake, as he had reached into the water from his boat to retrieve a caught fish. "Once bitten, twice shy", is a cautionary saying that applies to life, but here it should be more, once bitten, then dead. It was only when they had brought the great Zen master's body back to the monastery, that one of the new students spoke up. "Early this morning, I asked our master, what is death?" The master's reply was cryptic, to say the least, he had answered his student with this mysterious reply: "Death can only be known fully, when someone we know dies in front of our own eyes. Death needs to be felt, to be understood. Death and life live in, and for, each other." Had this great master allowed himself to die then, as a final lesson for his students, about the mystery of death? Was he right in his doing this, or not? Later that morning the students went to clean out the room of the master. On his bedside table was written this final note: "A death is often the greatest teaching. To live is sometimes not enough to death. To die is sometimes greater than to live.” Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The great Zen master, Hiroshoma Zenkai, fishing on his boat, just the day before his death, the very next day.