A First Zen Reader: compiled and translated by Trevor Leggett
Book Extract
In this extract from Trevor Leggett, we have a description of what the state of realisation feels like, and the next step that has to be taken afterwards.
Trevor Leggett (1914-2000), worked for the BBC for 24 years, lived and travelled in Japan and helped bring Judo to the West. He wrote on many subjects but Japanese and Indian religion were close to his heart.
Many Zen students, of a certain age, came to Zen through his books, A First Zen Reader and the follow up title The Tiger’s Cave. These were collections of stories from traditional sources and commentaries by contemporary Japanese Zen masters on excerpts from the Zen canon. The following extract is from the section: Hakuin’s “Song of Meditation” by Amakuki Sessan, a Zen abbott who gave a series of lectures on this poem on Japanese radio in the 1930s.
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Taking as form the form of no-form,
Going or returning, he is ever at home.
Taking as thought the thought of no-thought,
Singing and dancing, all is the voice of truth.
The Song of Meditation
Like the previous lines, these describe the state of realization. It is perhaps comparatively easy to reach the state where cause and effect are one; the realization of the universe as Sameness comes from the knowledge which is fundamental to man from the beginning. But the important thing is to go on from there, and through the other knowledge, which manifests after satori, we are to see the differences of form once more, and undertake the salvation of all.
It is not simply a question of having satori and waking up from a dream. The aim is to wake up and then be active. This is a specially important point which is frequently misunderstood. If Zen is practiced to get realization for one’s own release from the sufferings of birth and death and right and wrong, it is not the Zen of Mahayana. The aim must be to take a jump beyond realization, or in the Zen phrase, to take one step more from the top of the hundred-foot pole, and return to this world to extend the hand of compassion to all that lives. Traditionally, great stress has always been laid on the practice undertaken after satori, the so-called maturing in the holy womb. In this sense, the upward-looking path is rather the means of Zen, and the downward-returning path is the goal.
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