Was There Ever Any Confusion?

A wandering monk, resting before a small hermitage kept by an old woman during his travels, called out:

"Nun! Besides yourself, is there any other kin here?"

The old woman: "There is!"

The monk: "But why do I see no one?"

The old woman: "Look! Mountains and rivers, the earth, grasses and trees—they are all my kin!"

The monk: "The insentient are not the sentient. When have those mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees ever taken your form, Nun?"

The old woman: "Then what do I look like to you?"

The monk: "A layperson."

The old woman: "You are no renunciant either!"

The monk: "Nun, you must not confuse the Dharma."

The old woman: "I have not confused the Dharma at all!"

The monk: "A laywoman keeps a hermitage, grasses and trees become her companions in the Way—if that is not confusing the Dharma, what is?"

The old woman: "Dharma Master, you must not say such a thing. Remember—you are a man and I am a woman. When have we ever been confused?"

The myriad things of the universe are originally one. Mind, Buddha, and sentient beings are without distinction. Yet we stubbornly carve up this oneness, this nonduality, and view it through a discriminating eye. So in the world, right and wrong, good and evil, the sentient and the insentient—even men and women as different kinds—the worldly and the transmundane dharmas stand forever in opposition. But seen from the standpoint of the One True Dharma Realm, has one such as this old woman ever muddled anything?