Spiritual Stories of the East audiotape showcases Justin Stone’s ability to tell a story (and maybe advance the listener)

Every time I listen to Justin Stone’s audio tapes, a two-volume set called “Spiritual Stories of the East,” I’m amazed how it’s as if I’m hearing them for the first time. In fact, I’ve conceded that I am hearing for the first time, every time. I’ve even accepted my amazement. The words are the same; I can almost mouth the words like lyrics to songs that I’ve heard so often that one day I find that I know them. And, having the privilege of knowing Justin and hanging around him, I’ve heard these stories dozens more times. He tells them over and over. That quality of freshness, newness, activity, and dynamism comes not from the stories changing, but from the fact that “I” am changing!

These spiritual stories come in many layers, and where you are in your spiritual practice determines your ability to assimilate yet another layer grooved into the story. Let’s assume we’re all doing daily meditation. The sun comes up; the sun goes down. Every day, we sit. Months pass, years pass. Unlike getting taller or getting older or stepping on the scales to monitor our weight, spiritual progress is not measurable in familiar linear ways. We’re told the ultimate goal is to accord with Reality. Okay, how are we supposed to recognize this ineffable Reality? Well, perhaps one day we stub our toe and become enlightened; or, better yet, we hear one of these stories we’ve heard so many times, only this time it breaks us open…Or it cracks us open, or rocks us open, or seduces us open like a shaft of moonlight under the door. Or maybe the story just makes us laugh! Now that’s progress!

I encourage everyone to listen to these charming and enlightening stories again and often. Good Karma now packages them together as a two-volume set. I refrain from repeating any of the stories here; after all, they are more than just stories; they are like prasad—food that becomes divine by consecration in a temple. I also refrain from repeating them because probably you’ve heard them already a few times yourself. They contain the deeds and feats of Hakuin, Chao Chou, Hui-neng, Nasrudin, Tenko-san, Dogen, Toku-san, and Justin Stone—great lessons contained in stories such as when a simple ferryman trumps the pompous university professor who can’t swim, a disciple complaining of the cold gets pummeled and chased by his teacher, a great sadhu is chastised for chanting his mantra while urinating against a wall, an impatient lady breaks a broom over the head of the great Hakuin causing his breakthrough (“no Buddhas apart from beings”), a greedy merchant in India schemes to outwit the laws of karma, a great master invites a know-it-all seeker to take off his overcoat even though the seeker is dressed in a T-shirt, a monk insists on saving an ungrateful scorpion from drowning, a struggling and screaming student is picked up by the elbows for the “kill or be killed” sanzen session with the master (only a hopeless case is treated kindly by the teacher). The second tape is Justin’s own spiritual encounters and exploits during his years of traveling in the Orient and California. Some very interesting things happen to him along the way that anyone would be hard put to explain in logical terms, like how the little red book, a mathematical commentary in Chinese on the I Ching, ended up in Justin’s possession to find its way to the U.S. into the waiting hands of his friend Professor Huang a year later.

Despite the high drama of the stories one and all, they are woven through with the ordinary stuff of daily life. Justin says Zen masters use everyday incidents as opportunities to teach. He relates the story of his friend Dick who he takes to meet a Zen Roshi. Roshi invites them in and for a couple hours they talk, eat cookies, sip tea. They enjoy themselves and feel at home with their enlightened host, so much so that just before leaving, Dick says to Roshi, “I want you to teach me.” Roshi responds, “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last hour and a half?” This is how our teacher Justin teaches, too.

In reviewing the tapes, I noticed that Justin concludes each side by saying, for example, “This is the end of Side One.” This time I thought to myself, “For me, this is the beginning of Side One.” For the abundance of lessons contained in this veritable romp around the world and through the idiosyncratic meadows of Zen mind, for these opportunities to turn within ourselves for glimpses into our self-nature, we can be ever grateful, entertained, and, with any luck, enlightened.