Great Waves
In the early days of
the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler
called O-Nami, ‘Great Waves’.
O-Nami was immensly
strong and knew well the art of wresting. 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 great
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 waves sweeping everything before
them, swallowing all in 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
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, there was 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."
That
same day, O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that,
no one was
able to defeat him.
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