A worm, who did not know his birth and his name, was buried in the dark underground. Unable to bear the lonely loneliness and nameless depression in the darkness, he prayed to God over and over again in his heart to relieve this suffering.
Finally, one day, Namo Amitabha Buddha sensed the prayer of the buried worm. So he mercifully got the worm out of that dark underground and brought it to the Buddha Hall.
The Buddha said to that worm, "Let you be with the wooden fish, so that you can hear the sound; and with the green lamp, so that she can use the light to be you to see the scenery. Let you practice here in peace."
The worm wanted to say something about gratitude or something like that, but it had no talking mouth, so it nodded to the Buddha to represent gratitude.
It wanted to ask the Buddha about its birth and name, but it had no talking mouth. It had to settle for the wooden fish and green lamp.
Beginning of the worm is also very happy, but the days are long, listening to the mechanical sound of the wooden fish all day long, so that it feels boring, the green lamp of the Buddha Hall brought the scenery, so that it feels monotonous. The mystery of its birth and the nameless irritation came back with a vengeance. It remembered that it was in the darkness that it had prayed with all its heart to be saved by Namo Amitabha Buddha. It thought to itself: now that it was with the Buddha all day long and this close, the Buddha could surely sense what it said with all its heart.
The worm asked the Buddha with all his heart, "What is my birthright?"
The Buddha answered it, "You are a worm made by the Creator."
The worm again asked the Buddha with his heart, "What is my name?"
The Buddha answered it, "Nameless."
The worm asked the Buddha with all its heart, "The wooden fish and the green lamp are famous, but why am I nameless?"
The Buddha said, "You haven't yet learned some skills and won't be able to do anything out of it yet, so you'll have to practice in a nameless state."
The worm asked the Buddha with all his heart, "Can you have a name by practicing in a state of namelessness?"
The Buddha put his hands together and closed his eyes without saying a word, and the worm understood that the Buddha meant that he wanted to practice and learn to go on his own, and the worm, grateful for the Buddha's instruction, went on his own practice.
From then on, the bugs everywhere attentively to the wooden fish green lamp to ask for advice, learned some of the culture of the Buddha Hall, but also gradually figure out the meaning of some words.
One day, the Buddha came to check Worm's practice.
The Buddha asked the worm, "Have you made any progress lately?"
The worm did not answer the Buddha's question with his heart this time, but crawled to the Buddha's ink stone and rolled in the inkwell by himself, drank a bellyful of ink, and then had crawled on the Buddha's case and spat out ink again and again. After the worm finished crawling, two words appeared, "worm" and "single".
The Buddha saw that one of these two characters was the same as the word Shan in Zen. He also understood that the worm's was the worm's meaning of feeling alone. Buddha touched this worm kind of not willing to be nameless and make all the efforts. After pondering for a while, he said to the worm, "I use the two words you crawled out to combine and bestow a name on you. This word is pronounced chan, the same sound as zen. Since it is the word you crawled out of yourself, it is written cicada"
The bug was finally famous! It's called Cicada!