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SATORI
159 process continues inexorably. Depth upon depth of unendurable truth opens."1 If I venture to mention three of my own experiences it is only to show the variety that one mind may experience.
I was having tea alone with the cat on my lap, and a "tea-time" programme on the wireless to relax my mind after a session of writing this book. I suddenly felt very happy, an unusual state in my intensely active and imaginative mind, then, as it were, I felt about me a steadily rising tide of enormous joy. I wanted to sing, or to dance to the music. The warmth of the tide was glorious, as of a huge affectionate flame. I remained intellectually conscious; that is, I was critical of my own condition, considering it, comparing it, wondering what it might mean. Never before had I attained this discriminate consciousness which functions on a plane where all discrimination seemed absurd. Then the tide ebbed slowly and I was left exhilarated, rested, refreshed.
A far more prolonged experience took place in Kyoto. I went for the week-end from my work in Tokyo, and only on a return visit a fortnight later did I realise the condition of mind in which I had spent the entire weekend. It was the climax of an attempt to draw together various Japanese sects on the “Twelve Principles of Buddhism”, the birth of which I described in Via Tokyo. I was probably worked up to the importance of the occasion, but when I arrived at the all-important meeting, and was faced with fifty distinguished Buddhist abbots and monks from all over Japan, I suddenly dropped all mental content, all emotion, and sat, without thinking what I was to say, in a state of almost absurd serenity. I
1 Quoted Ibid, p. 158.
