No Water, No Moon

When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko she struggled with meditation for a long time.

After twenty years, one moonlit night, she was carrying water in an old bucket bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out, and in that moment Chiyono attained.

In commemoration,
she wrote a poem:
 

In this way and that I tried to save the old bucket
The bamboo strap was weakening and about to break
At last the bottom fell out.

No water – no moon