Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 256

INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION 223 the same safe landing in Sattva, the serene and certain joy which is known in Zen as satori.
But satori comes slowly, I believe, and differently for different seekers according to their present mental makeup, and, what is really the same thing, their Karma, both in this life and in lives gone by. If one may generalise from known material, the process is, at least frequently, as follows:
At first the higher state of awareness illumines higher thought. The light of satori brightens the upper levels of the intellect. One may suddenly have a "bright idea" about life or even a business problem-a flash of clear perception, so brilliant and simple that you cannot understand why you did not see” it before. Then, or concurrently, come brief flashes of insight at a much higher level. Then come, or it may be that they have already come, longer periods of a lower level of satori when the normal consciousness knows that it is enjoying this higher state of awareness. Then, especially if meditation of some kind is regularly practised, some level of satori, though at first a low one, is attainable, if not at will, at least in the more successful sessions of inwardturned attention. In the Pali Canon we read of the Jhanas (Sanskrit, Dhyana) which the late Mrs. Rhys Davids would call “musings", but which are surely far higher than the ordinary meaning of that term. Rather are they a raising of consciousness to successively higher levels of Awareness from the rupa, or form worlds, however fine the form, to the arupa, formless planes of ever purer abstraction. This stage develops into the power of achieving this state of consciousness anywhere at any time, like the turning on of a switch, even though the effort to do