When the Shoe Fits ~ 09
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| event type | discourse |
| date & time | 19 Oct 1974 am |
| location | Lao Tzu balcony, Poona |
| language | English |
| audio | Available, duration 1h 35min. Quality: good. |
| online audio | |
| video | Not available |
| online video | |
| see also |
|
| online text | find the PDF of this discourse |
| shorttitle | SHOE09 |
- notes
- synopsis
- Reader of the sutra: Sw Ananda Teertha.
- The sutra
- Duke Hwan of Khi, first in his dynasty, sat under his canopy reading his philosophy. And Phien the wheelwright was out in the yard making a wheel.
- Phien laid aside hammer and chisel, climbed the steps, and said to duke Hwan: 'May I ask you, lord, what is this you are reading?'
- The duke said: 'The experts, the authorities.'
- And Phien asked: 'Alive or dead?'
- The duke said: 'Dead a long time.'
- 'Then,' said the wheelwright, 'you are reading only the dirt they left behind.'
- The duke replied: 'What do you know about it? You are only a wheelwright. You had better give me a good explanation or else you must die.'
- The wheelwright said: 'Let us look at the affair from my point of view. When I make wheels, if I go easy they fall apart, and if I am too rough they do not fit. But if I am neither too easy nor too violent they come out right. The work is what I want it to be.
- You cannot put this into words, you just have to know how it is. I cannot even tell my own son exactly how it is done, and my own son cannot learn it from me. So here I am, seventy years old, still making wheels!
- The men of old took all they really knew with them to the grave. And so, lord, what you are reading there is only the dirt they left behind them.'
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