Master Shaku Soen liked to take an evening stroll through a nearby village. One day he heard loud lamentations from a house and, on entering quietly, realized that the householder had died and the family and neighbors were crying. He sat down and cried with them. An old man noticed him and remarked, rather shaken on seeing the famous master crying with them, "I would have thought that you at least were beyond such things." "But it is this which puts me beyond it," replied the master with a sob.

—Irmgard Schloegl