Meditation Master Tokusan stopped by the wayside to catch his breath. At that moment, an old woman came up beside him, also stopping by the side of the road to rest a bit. Tokusan casually asked her who she was. The old woman replied, “I’m just an old woman who sells rice cakes.” Tokusan asked her if she would sell him some for his personal use. The old woman replied, “Reverend Monk, what use would you have for buying them?”
Tokusan said, “I want to buy them to refresh my mind.”
The old woman then remarked, “Reverend Monk, that load you’re carrying with you is really something!” Tokusan replied, “Have you not heard of me? I am the Fully Perfected Lord of the Diamond-Cutting Scripture. I have so mastered this Scripture that there is nothing in It that I do not understand. What I am carrying with me are my commentaries on the Diamond-Cutting Scripture.”
Upon hearing him say this, the old woman asked, “Reverend Monk, would you permit an old woman like me to put a question to you?” Tokusan replied, “You have my permission to ask whatever you may wish.” The old woman said, “I once heard the part in the Diamond-Cutting Scripture where it says, ‘the mind of the past cannot be held onto; the mind of the present cannot be held onto; the mind of the future cannot be held onto.’ Which mind do you think you will refresh with these rice cakes? If the reverend monk is able to say, I will sell you some rice cakes. If the reverend monk is unable to say, I will not sell you any.”
Tokusan, at this moment, was so flabbergasted that he did not recall how he would have customarily responded, whereupon the old woman dismissed him with a flick of her wrist and departed without selling Tokusan any of her rice cakes.
– From the Shobogenzo