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SATORI
145
The means are as many as the efforts of men. The koan and the mondo are two of them, but scores have attained satori who have never heard of either. Any device is good which works, and a thousand more have yet to be found and used as men have need of them. All, however, will have in common the emptying of the self, that into the space so made the light of life, the eternal More, may flow. Everything must be emptied out, the toys that we love, each cherished, loved ideal as well as each "fond offence”, all purpose and desire. The self, with its pride and regret of the past, its fears and boasts and desires of the moment, its hopes and ambitions for the days unborn, must be transcended.
Even the approach to the bridge involves enormous effort. “Knock and it shall be opened unto you" is true. It is also true that our whole existence must be thrown down at the door”! or, as I would have put it, thrown at the door. The preparation is usually long, but depends, of course, on the individual. And as the man is his mind, and the mind is the net resultant of its own past causes, created in this life and in scores of lives gone by, the variety of mind which seeks for satori is all but infinite. The effort required is therefore equally various, having this in common, that "You yourself must make the effort. (Even) Buddhas do but point the way".2 The preparation, as already said, may be made in the monastery or in the world of men. "When occupations come to us we must accept them, when things come to us we must understand them from the ground up. If the occupations are regulated by correct thoughts the Light is not scattered by outside
1 Living by Zen, MS., iv, p. 28. 2 Dhammapada, v, 276.
