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These are the twelve austerities. The Venerable Mahakasyapa
observed them faithfully for his entire lifetime, never backsliding. Even after
he had inherited the Treasury of the Eye of the Complete Dharma from the
Buddha, he never gave up the observance of these austerities. Once the
Buddha said to him, “You are now quite old, please eat what the monks eat.”
Mahakasyapa replied, “If I had not met with the One Thus Come appearing in
the world, I would have been a pratyekabuddha dwelling alone in the
mountains and forests. Now, because the Thus Come has appeared in the
world, I have acquired the nourishment of the Dharma. In order to maintain
continuous practice, I will not eat the monks’ food.” The Thus Come One
praised him for this.
 
Also, Mahakasyapa grew very emaciated because of his austerities so
when some monks saw him they made fun of him. The Thus Come warmly
invited Mahakasyapa to sit beside him on his own seat. So Mahakasyapa sat
on the same seat with the Buddha. He was the senior of the Buddha’s
community, and all the examples of his entire lifetime of continuous practice
cannot be completely told.
Looking into Mahakasyapa’s demonstration of the continuous practice of
unremitting exertion will give us an opportunity to discuss the environment of
practice during Sakyamuni Buddha’s lifetime.
Mahakasyapa was amongst the Buddha’s earliest students and was the senior
most among them when he died. Dogen zenji refers to him as the Eighth Ancestors
because the Transmission was said to have come through Buddhas before Buddha.
The Transmission ran through 
Vipashyin Buddha daiosho to
Sikhin Buddha daiosho to
Vishvabhu Buddha daiosho to 
Krakucchandu Buddha daiosho to 
Kanakamuni Buddha daiosho to
Kashyapa Buddha daiosho to
Sakyamuni Buddha daiosho to
Mahakasyapa daiosho.
There were several other monks named Kasyapa, so he became known as
“Big Kasyapa”.
He had born into a very wealthy family. It is said that his family had four
nursemaids to care just for him. His skin was golden and so he was called, “drinker
of light” or Kashyapa because it was as if he was filled with golden light. He was said
to have thirty of the thirty-two major marks of a great man and the astrologers
predicted that he would become a wandering monk. By the age of eight he was
diligently studying mathematics, dancing, and painting. He was very intelligent and
quickly became disenchanted with projects. He began to talk about wanting to leave
his family and take up the search for a meaningful life as a wandering mendicant. His
family insisted that he was young, he should get married. He had an artisan sculpt a
statue in gold of an impossibly beautiful woman and said that if his parents found
him a bride like this, he would get married and settle down. Although he thought
that this meant that he would soon be free, his parents soon presented him with a
bride identical in every feature to the statue. Except that she wasn’t made of gold.
Resigning himself, he married the woman but neither of them felt any inclination to
consummate the marriage and his unhappy parents died without grandchildren. 
Soon after this, Mahakasyapa was watching his family’s servants ploughing
the field when he noticed insects and worms being turned up by the shovels and
crushed by the passage of the hoe. When he went to see his wife, she told him that
she had been watching sesame oil being pressed and that there had been tiny