Kitano Genpo, abbot of Ei-Hei-Ji, was ninety-two years old when he passed away in the year 1933. He endeavoured his whole life not to be attached to anything. As a wandering mendicant when he was twenty, he happened to meet a
traveller who smoked tobacco. As they walked together down a mountain road, they stopped under a tree to rest. The traveller offered Kitano a smoke which he accepted, as he was very hungry at the time.
"How pleasant this smoking is," he com-mented. The other gave him an extra pipe and tobacco, and they parted.
Kitano felt, "Such pleasant things may disturb my meditation. Before this goes too far, I will stop now." So he threw the smoking outfit away.
When he was twenty-three years old he studied I-King, the profoundest doctrine of the universe. It was winter at the time, and he needed some heavy clothes. He wrote his teacher who lived a hundred miles away, telling him of his need, and gave the letter to a traveller to deliver. Almost the whole winter passed and neither answer nor clothes arrived. So Kitano resorted to the prescience of I-King, which also teaches the art of divination, to determine whether or not his letter had been miscarried.
He found that this had been the case. A letter afterwards from his teacher made no mention of clothes.
"If I perform such accurate determinative work with I-King, I may neglect my meditation," felt Kitano. So he gave up this marvellous teaching and never resorted to its powers again.
When he was twenty-eight, he studied Chinese calligraphy and poetry. He grew so skilful in these arts that his teacher praised him. Kitano mused, "If I don't stop now, I'll be a poet, not a Zen teacher." So he never wrote another poem.