| |
into enlightenment, but Kyogen failed.
Sometimes when you think you have failed you drop the mind, the mind of the achiever. The mind turns everything into an object: "Achieve this, attain that!" Mind makes everything a goal.
Frustrated that he is not attaining enlightenment, HE LEFT ISAN AND WENT TO LIVE A SOLITARY EXISTENCE IN A HUT IN THE FOREST.
HE REALIZED HIS ENLIGHTENMENT ONE DAY ON HEARING THE SOUND OF A STONE STRIKING BAMBOO.
There are moments of which you may not be aware, but if you have dropped the idea of attaining anything, any achievement, mind slowly slowly settles. If there is nowhere to go, why prepare for it? If nothing has to be achieved, then why unnecessarily harass yourself?
It was not the stone hitting the bamboo, it was really the right moment, a coincidence. The bamboo made the sound in a mind that was utterly empty, that had dropped even the idea of enlightenment. What Isan could not do, what no master can do, was done by hearing the sound of a stone striking bamboo.
AFTER THIS, KYOGEN LEFT HIS HERMITAGE AND WENT BACK TO ISAN, WHO CONFIRMED HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.
He has gone for two reasons back to Isan: to see whether Isan recognizes his enlightenment or not, and to express his gratitude to him, to say that without being with him for fifteen years doing all kinds of meditations, he could not have dropped everything; without those fifteen years of strenuous work, it would not have been possible for him to have become enlightened by the sound of a stone striking the bamboos.
He still considers Isan his master; he prepared him. Although enlightenment did not happen in his vicinity, the preparation had been done by Isan wherever it was going to happen. So these were the two reasons: to show his gratitude by putting his head on Isan's feet, and to wait to see whether Isan recognizes what has happened to him.
Recognition is not a kind of certificate. It is simply that a man of clear insight can decide more easily about the new phenomenon. For Kyozan it was so new. He has never known such a thing; what to call it? Is this enlightenment? He wanted to know also.
AFTER THIS, KYOGEN
|
|
|