In a meeting to plan for the setting up of a Zen center, a nun was sitting next to the Master and started to examine his face carefully. She thought, “Shifu’s face is full of wrinkles, and he looks no different from any ordinary old man. So, why are these prestigious people so respectful of him?”

After the meeting, when all the lay disciples had left, the Master talked to the monks and nuns, “There is no conceptual thought in awareness; pure awareness is without attachment …. When Buddhists are very advanced in their practices, in outward appearance, they look like ordinary people, but their minds will be totally different. This is what we call ‘Subduing your light to blend in with the ordinary.’”