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you know it or not makes no difference. A few Buddhas are fast asleep and snoring, a few Buddhas have become awakened, but both are Buddhas.
In Zen there is no method. Not that Zen Masters don't give methods to their disciples, they do give -- they give methods only to prove to you, to your heart's desire and contentment, that all methods are useless. They give methods so that you work on the method, and slowly slowly you see the futility of it. The moment you see the futility of one method and you are finished with that, a higher method will be given to you and so on and so forth. Higher and higher methods will be given; and ultimately, slowly slowly, you will cling ate all the methods because you will see the futility of them all.
One day you will come to the point where you will see that there is nothing to be attained, nowhere to go. That moment in Zen is called 'the great doubt'. That moment is known in the West through Christian mystics as 'the dark night of the soul'. It is really a dark night of the soul, the great doubt. Nothing to be attained, nowhere to go, all future disappears; you are in a kind of shock. Then who are you? Then what are you doing here? Then why this existence? All seems meaningless if there is no attainment, if there is no way to reach and nowhere to reach and nobody to reach. Then what is all this? A great doubt arises.
This doubt precedes SATORI. This great doubt, this dark night of the soul, always precedes SATORI. Either you fall back because of the doubt -- you start moving again into methods, you start clinging again to methods, paths and ways, and scriptures and principles and philosophies and doctrines. You fall back; just to avoid the doubt you start clinging to something again. But if you are really courageous... And this is real courage: that you remain in doubt, and you don't fall back, and you don't cling to anything again. You leave yourself in this dark night of the soul, helpless, lost -- utterly lost, seeing no meaning and seeing no future. If this courage is there, SATORI happens. Suddenly, out of this great doubt, and the pain and agony of it, you become awakened.
A parallel exists in nightmares.
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