Thus have I heard. At one time the Blessed One was dwelling neither in the forest nor upon the mountain, but among those who had come to sit beside him — and this was itself the dwelling. A monk approached and asked: "Venerable one, what is the root of the path?" The Blessed One was silent for a time. Then he said: "Look to your left. Look to your right. What you see there — that is the root." The monk did not understand. He returned to his seat.
The teaching is a lamp. But consider: it is not the lamp that drives away the cold. It is the bodies gathered around the lamp. When the oil is spent and the flame goes out, those who sat together do not scatter into the dark as strangers. They already know one another's breathing. He who masters every word of the teaching and sits alone has grasped the finger entirely and missed nothing — except the moon, the night, and everyone who came to look.
When two monks dispute the nature of cessation, let them dispute with full sincerity. Let neither concede what he does not believe. But let them share the meal afterward. Those who argued most bitterly over the teaching remained longest together. The dispute was the thread by which they were bound. The one who holds the correct view and feels no need to express it to another — where is he? He is alone. He is very correct. An island is not a sangha.
There was a woman who came every fortnight to the assembly. She did not understand the teaching. She said so plainly. She came because her friend came, and her friend came because the hall was warm, and the hall was warm because many came. She sat in the back. She did not meditate well. She had strong opinions about which dishes should be served and when, and she was not always wrong. When she died, seven people wept who would not otherwise have known one another. They wept together, which is different from weeping. In subsequent years, three of them entered monastic life, two married, one became a physician, and one continued to come every fortnight and sit in the back and not meditate well, because that is what you do when someone taught you that this is what you do. Do not calculate what she believed.
A hall in which the teaching is perfectly preserved and no one gathers — what is it? A library. Libraries are good. But a library does not look after you when you are sick. A library will not notice your absence.
Many have asked: when a teaching becomes corrupt or confused, should the assembly disperse? The Blessed One said: "How long has the assembly been together?" The monk said: "Thirty years, Venerable One." "Correct the teaching. Do not disperse." "But what if the teaching cannot be corrected?" The Blessed One was quiet for a long time. Then: "Then let the error be held gently. From the sitting, a corrected teaching will eventually arise — not from a mind alone, but from minds in proximity, as it has always arisen, as it will always arise." The monk was dissatisfied with this answer. He sat with it for eleven years. By the end of the eleven years the original question had changed shape and he found he was no longer asking it.
Whatever doctrine passes, let it pass. What remains when the doctrine has passed is the name you called out in the dark and the voice that answered. This is the field. Tend the field.
Thus it was spoken. Thus it was heard. Thus it was passed along by those who remembered it differently but agreed it had been said.
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