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Annoucement

 

Tanzan wrote sixty postal cards on the last day of his life, and

asked an attendent to mail them. Then he passed away.

 

The cards read:

 

I am departming from this world. Tanzan

July 27, 1892

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Great Waves

 

In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler

called O-nami, Great Waves.

 

O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his

private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in public he was so bashful

that his own pupils threw him.

 

O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a

wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby,so O-nami went to

see him and told him of his trouble.

 

" Great Waves is your name, " the teacher advised, " so stay in this

temple tonight, Imagine that you are those billows.You are no longer a

wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge wavessweeping everything before

them, swallowing in all their path. Do this and you will be the greatest

wrestler in the land. "

 

The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine

himself as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradually he

turned more and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the

waves became larger and larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases.

Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was

nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.

 

In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on

his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder. " Now nothing can disturb you, "

he said. " You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you. "

 

The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After

that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.

 

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Swami