Others Are Not You
Others are not you.
Others are not you.
At Eihei-ji Temple, there was an elderly Zen master in his eighties, his back hunched, drying shiitake mushrooms under the blazing sun. When the abbot, Master Dōgen, saw him, he couldn't help but say, "Venerable sir, you're so advanced in years—why must you still toil like this? Please don't push yourself so hard. I can easily find someone to do this for you."
The old master replied without a moment's hesitation: "Others are not me."
Dōgen said: "True enough! But if you must work, you don't have to do it under such a blazing sun!"
The old master replied: "If I don't dry the mushrooms on a sunny day, should I wait for overcast skies or rain?"
As the head of the temple, Master Dōgen guided practitioners from all directions, but faced with this old master, he finally conceded defeat.
In a Zen practitioner's life, no task is handed off to another, nor put off until tomorrow. Others are not me. If not now, when?
Source: China Buddhist Stories Network