"We have discussed the sutras written when he had become enlightened. It is a good comparison…to see in a single man what enlightenment brings and what the impediments are. Even to a man like Dogen with such immense and unique intelligence…the problem arises that his intelligence is so great that it is very difficult to take the jump out of it.

"Sometimes things which are blissful, fortunate, become unfortunate, dangerously preventing the quantum leap. You can see why I call him still a scholar.

Dogen wrote: Quietly consider…

"What is consideration? It cannot be meditation. There is no place for consideration in meditation. Consideration is of the mind, consideration is another name for thinking. And how can you consider something which you don't know?

"Just the fact that he is asking,

Quietly consider the fact that if this were a time when the true dharma has not yet spread throughout the world, it would be impossible for us to come into contact with it.

"Sheer nonsense. If Gautam Buddha could become a buddha when there were no precedents, then what is the problem for you to become a buddha? Whether Buddha existed or not – he may be a myth, a fiction, it makes no difference, because it is not Gautam Buddha that has to be taken into consideration. It is your own being which I am calling the buddha. And your own being is always with you, whether Buddha has existed or not, whether so many enlightened people on his path have existed or not.

"I don't have a master, I don't know Chinese. I don't know Japanese, in which the original Zen teachings are written, and I don't care! In fact, listening to me, if the scholars see that I am saying something different from what is in their books, then they should change their books, correct their books.

"It happened…Bhikkshu Anand Kausalyayan has just died. He was one of the most prominent Buddhists of the contemporary world. I used to stay in Nagpur in a friend's house when I was traveling around India, and that friend was intimate with Bhikkshu Anand Kausalyayan. He said to me, 'Anand Kausalyayan wants to meet you."