The Certificate Ikkyū Would Not Take

Text

After formally acknowledging Ikkyū's attainment, Kasō prepared a certificate of awakening and offered it to him. Ikkyū refused to accept it, saying he wanted no document. Kasō said: 'You refuse my certificate. Do you also refuse the dharma?' Ikkyū said: 'I refuse the paper. The dharma I cannot refuse — it already has me.' Kasō looked at him for a long moment. 'Then you understand the certificate better than those who accept it,' he said. He set the document aside. It was never given to anyone else.

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Speaker
  Kaso Sodon

Lineage: Rinzai

By Kaso Sodon

• The Crow and the Confirmationdialogue
• Why the Hermitage at Katadasaying

From Tōkai Yawa (Evening Conversations East of the Lake)

• The Crow and the Confirmation

Sources

• contentZen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2 — Japan

  Heinrich Dumoulin (trans. James W. Heisig & Paul Knitter)

  Tōkai Yawa; cf. Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 2, p. 180; Arntzen, Ikkyū and the Crazy Cloud Anthology, pp. 18–19

  Tōkai Yawa (Evening Conversations East of the Lake): The Certificate Ikkyū Would Not Take