The Voice at 3 AM

On the opening day of rohatsu, the Master addressed the assembly: "In my place, our normal everyday life is meditation, so it's not like everywhere else where they announce: 'From today on, meditation!' and everyone specially hurls himself into frantic practice."

The Master then went on to say: "Once, while I was in Dosha's assembly, a monk was sleeping in meditation. Another monk there suddenly struck him, but I scolded him for doing this.

"'Why should you hit someone who's pleasantly sleeping?' I said. 'When that monk is sleeping, do you think he's a different person!'

"I'm not encouraging people to sleep, but to hit them because they do is terribly wrong. Here in my place now, I don't allow that sort of thing. While I'm not encouraging people to sleep, I don't hit them or scold them for doing so. I don't scold or praise sleeping, and I don't scold or praise not sleeping. Whether people happen to be asleep or awake, just let them be as they are. When they're asleep, they're sleeping in the Buddha Mind they were awake in; when they're awake, they're awake in the Buddha Mind. They're always abiding in the Buddha Mind, and there's not a moment when they're ever abiding in anything else. So it's mistaken to think that when a person is asleep he turns into something different.

"Don't beat sleeping monks" from Bankei Zen pages 21-22.

"Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen" by Alan Watts