These cases will be sufficient to show what mental process one has to
go through with before the opening of satori takes place. Of course
these are prominent examples and highly accentuated, and every satori
is not preceded by such an extraordinary degree of concentration. But
an experience more or less like these must be the necessary antecedent
to all satori, especially to that which is to be gone through with
at the outset of the study. The mirror of mind or the field of
consciousness then seems to be so thoroughly swept clean as not to
leave a particle of dust on it. When thus all mentation is temporarily
suspended, even the consciousness of an effort to keep an idea focussed
at the centre of attention is gone, that is, when, as the Zen followers
say, the mind is so completely possessed or identified with its object
of thought that even the consciousness of identity is lost as when one
mirror reflects another, the subject feels as if living in a crystal
palace, all transparent, refreshing, buoyant, and royal. But the end
has not yet been reached, this being merely the preliminary condition
leading to the consummation called satori. If the mind remains in this
state of fixation, there will be no occasion for its being awakened
to the truth of Zen. The state of “Great Doubt” (_tai-gi_), as it is
technically known, is the antecedent. It must be broken up and exploded
into the next stage, which is looking into one’s nature or the opening
of satori.
The explosion, as it is nothing else, generally takes place when this
finely balanced equilibrium tilts for one reason or another. A stone is
thrown into a sheet of water in perfect stillness, and the disturbance
at once spreads all over the surface. It is somewhat like this.
A sound knocks at the gate of consciousness so tightly closed, and it
at once reverberates through the entire being of the individual. He is
awakened in the most vivid sense of the word. He comes out baptised in
the fire of creation. He has seen the work of God in his very workshop.
The occasion may not necessarily be the hearing of a temple bell, it
may be reading a stanza, or seeing something moving, or the sense of
touch irritated, when a most highly accentuated state of concentration
bursts out into a satori.
The concentration, however, may not be kept up to such an almost
abnormal degree as in the case of Bukko. It may last just a second or
two, and if it is the right kind of concentration and rightly handled
by the master, the inevitable opening of the mind will follow. When
the monk Jō (Ting) asked Rinzai,[5.42] “What is the ultimate principle
of Buddhism?” the master came right down from his seat, took hold of
the monk, slapped him with his hand, and pushed him away from him. The
monk stood stupefied. A bystander suggested, “Why don’t you make a
bow?” Obeying the order, Jō was about to bow when he abruptly awoke to
the truth of Zen. In this case Jo’s self-absorption or concentration
did not seemingly last very long, the bowing was the turning point,
it broke up the spell and restored him to sense, not to an ordinary
sense of awareness, but to the inward consciousness of his own being.
Generally we have no records of the inner working prior to a satori,
and may pass lightly over the event as a merely happy incident or some
intellectual trick having no deeper background. When we read such
records, we have to supply from our own experience, whatever this is,
all the necessary antecedent conditions for breaking up into a satori.