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was no longer interested in results, nor anxious, nor proud, nor at all concerned with self. I was utterly happy, perfectly serene, and above all magnificently certain. I knew what I had to say and do; I knew that it was right. I felt but a cog in an infinitely complex process of becoming, wherein I just played what I knew to be my part. There was neither emotion nor thought; all differences were healed in wholeness. There was a light within me as well as the sunlight filtering through the bamboo curtains on to the golden floor. When I spoke, I am told that I spoke "as one having authority". In the end all agreed to what I had asked, but I did not react to any victory. I just went on to the next appointment, a pleasant dinner with friends which I enjoyed enormously. Only a fortnight later, when I met the same group of men and tried to settle details with them did I find that I was arguing. The vision was gone, and with it the certainty. I was back in the world of the opposites and I was on one side.
A third type of experience, and indeed my first, had no immediate "background" and I was in fact in a Turkish bath. Suddenly, as I lay at physical and mental ease, there was a blinding flash of vision, a lightning flash that "held" for several seconds of time. I understood at last, completely and beyond all argument, the whole problem of self and selfishness, of suffering and the cause of suffering, of desire and the ending of desire. Like a fool I tried to explain the vision to myself, and of course it fled.
None of these examples, of famous men or my own, has any concern with God. Satori is utterly impersonal, draws all its powers under a central wing and stands like a rock on its own foundation. It is sufficient unto itself, its own authority. It is utterly here and now and "this",
ZEN
BUDDHISM
