Baso was a master of the ninth century. One day he was sitting with his feet across the garden-path. A monk came along with a wheel-barrow. “Tuck in your feet,” said the monk. “What has been extended cannot be retracted,” answered Baso. “What has been started cannot be stopped,” cried the monk and pushed the barrow over Baso’s feet. The master hobbled to the monastery and seizing an axe called out “Have any of you seen the rascal who hurt my feet?” The monk who had pushed the barrow then came out and stood “with craned head.” The master laid down his axe.

To understand this story we must realise that the wheel-barrow is here a symbol of the Wheel of Life and Death, which, though every spoke of it is illusion, cannot be disregarded till we have destroyed the last seed of phenomenal perception in us.