The Miracle of Ordinariness

Ep. 6 Beloved acharya, bankei was preaching quietly to his followers one day when his talking was interrupted by a priest from another sect. This sect believed in the power of miracles, and thought that salvation came from repeating holy words. Bankei stopped talking, and asked the priest what he wanted to say. The priest boasted that the founder of his religion could stand on one bank of the river with a brush in his hand and write a holy name on a piece of paper held by an assistant on the opposite bank of the river. The priest asked, "what miracles can you do?" bankei replied,"only one. When I am hungry I eat, and when I am thirsty I drink." Season 4 Using traditional Zen stories and responding to seekers' questions, Acharya shows how man must first be grounded in himself before he can fly into the sky of consciousness. Acharya takes the reader from subjects as diverse as food, jealousy, businessmen and enlightenment, to how to know if one needs a master, the barriers we create through fear, and gratitude. "Be rooted in the earth so that you can stretch to the sky; be rooted in the visible so that you can reach into the invisible. Don't create duality and don't create any antagonism. If I am against anything, I am against antagonism. I am against being against anything; I am for the whole, the complete circle. The world and God are not divided anywhere. There is no boundary: the world goes on spreading into God and God goes on spreading into the world. Really, to use two words is not good but language creates problems. We say the creator and the created, we divide. Language is dualistic; in reality there is no created and no creator, only creativity, only a process of infinite creativity. Nothing is divided. Everything is one -- undivided."