Testimonials to Enlightenment

American Ex-Businessman, Age 46

….I have labored like a mountain these five years only to bring forth this mouse? I’ll go on! I threw myself into meditation for another nine hours with such utter absorption that I completely vanished…..I didn’t eat breakfast, breakfast was eaten. I didn’t sweep and wash the floors after breakfast, there was sweeping and washing. I didn’t eat lunch, lunch was eaten. Once or twice ideas of satori started to rear their heads, but meditation promptly chopped them off. Again and again the master whacked me, crying, “Victory is yours if you don’t relinquish your hold on meditation!”

Later the master scrutinized me as I entered his room, walked towards him, prostrated myself, and sat before him with my mind alert and exhilarated…..”The universe is One,” he began, each word tearing into my mind like a bullet. “The moon of Truth –“ All at once the master, the room, every single thing disappeared in a dazzling stream of illumination and I felt myself bathed in a delicious, unspeakable delight….For a fleeting eternity I was alone – I alone was…Then the master swam into view. Our eyes met and flowed into each other, and we burst out laughing…..”I have it! I know! There is nothing, absolutely nothing. I am everything and everything is nothing!” I exclaimed more to myself than to the master, and got up and walked out…..

….”Although your realization is clear,” Master explained, “you can expand and deepen it infinitely.”

I am grateful for everything that has happened to me. But, mostly, I am grateful for my human body, for the privilege as a human being to know this joy, like no other.

 

An American Schoolteacher, Age 38

…Then I took a walk and suddenly the whole experience of the last few days seemed utterly ridiculous to me. “That stupid master,” I remember thinking, “he and his Oriental hocus-pocus. He just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” At dinner, half an hour later, as I was fumbling with my chopsticks, I felt like getting up and handing him a fork. “Here, old boy, let’s get used to Western ways.” I giggled at my own joke. Throughout the evening chanting I could hardly keep a straight face. After the master’s final words I wanted to pick up my bag and walk out, never to return, so unreal did it all seem.

In his first lecture the master had told us that effort to become realized is like a red-hot ball stuck in the throat which one can neither swallow nor spit out. He was right, so right. As I look back, every word, every move was part of the deliberate plan of this venerable teacher. His name, “White Cloud,” indeed fits him. He is the greatest, whitest cloud I have ever experienced, a real antidote to the dark atomic mushroom.

Now I was in bed, doing zazen again. All night long I alternately breathed and fell into trances. I thought of the monk who had reached self-realization in just such a state of fatigue. Eventually I must have dozed off in complete exhaustion. Suddenly the same light angel touched me on the shoulder (her husband). Only this time I awoke with a bright “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” and realized I was enlightened. The angel was my kind, tired husband tapping me on the shoulder to waken me to go to sesshin.

A strange power propelled me. When the Master came around with his ‘sword’ I told him not to bother hitting me. I was rushed into the little cottage my teacher was occupying and hugged and kissed him and shook Tai-san’s hand, and let loose with such a torrent of comical verbosity that all three of us laughed with delight. The Master tested and passed me, and I was officially ushered through the first barrier of the gateless gate.

 

Japanese Insurance Adjuster, Age 25

…..The one-week August meditation had arrived. Owing to the pressure of the business, I could not get to the temple until noon of the second day. My strategy for this meditation was to sit determinedly, like a ball of fire, during sitting periods, and to relax completely during rest periods. At the opening of the third day the Master had reminded everyone: “Every year at this great meditation at least one person gets enlightenment. Then and there I had made up my mind that if anybody got enlightenment it would be me.

The fourth day had come. Again and again I was walloped by the master, once so hard that my mind and body became momentarily paralyzed. This day I “fought” the hardest. But in spite of everything, I still could not come to enlightenment. Now it was the fifth day; only a day and a half remained to me. On the sixth day I threw my last ounce of energy into the “battle,” allowing nothing whatever to sidetrack me. After the morning chores, and just before the master’s talk, a university student sitting near me (who got enlightenment at this meditation), suddenly yelled out: “You foolish, foolish, stupid guy!” referring to himself. “Go on, on! One more step, only one! The summit! Die if need be, die!” The strength of his desperation flowed into me and I began to concentrate as though my very life depended on it.

My mind was empty as an infant’s as I listened to the Master’s lecture. He was reading from an ancient koan: “Not even a sage can impart a word about the Realm (of Silence) from which thoughts issue….A piece of string is eternal and boundless…. The bare white Ox before you is pure, vivid…”

As the Master spoke in a clam, quiet voice, I felt every one of his words filter into the deepest recesses of my mind. “Not even a sage can utter a word about that Realm from which thoughts issue,” the Master repeated, adding, “No, not even a Buddha.” “Of course! Of course!” I repeated breathlessly. “Then why have I been searching for such a word?” All at once everything became sheer brilliance, and I saw and knew that I am the only One in the whole universe! Yes, I am that only One!

 

An American Artist, Age 51

…..The ting of that tiny bell at Pendle Hill meditation was the shock, the force that crumbled walls that had been gently eroding through four years of meditation, and before that five years of kriya yoga every day, every night. Patiently, stubbornly, I had sat, sat, sat. Sometimes a long time, sometimes a few minutes, buy always always every day. Sitting patiently had become so familiar that I accepted it as naturally and uneventfully as breathing.

When I arrived at the Pendle Hill sesshin I had never seen the Master before. His monk interpreter I had met where I had attended a meditation four years earlier. I was braced for the physical misery of four and a half days of meditation, but I also knew well that the reward was clarity and peace. After attending the meditation in Delaware conducted by Nakagawa-roshi in 1961, I had jotted down: “I feel that I’ve been turned inside out, shaken, and rinsed in pure, clear water.”

So this Pendle Hill meditation began. About forty strangers sat together, some merely curious, some very earnest. The Master divided the group, according to their expressed purpose for being there, into several smaller groups. He spoke privately to each of the groups, explaining the discipline they were to follow during the next four and a half days. I was one of those who sought enlightenment, and to this group he gave the koan Joshu’s Mu.

I began to sit with Mu.

The first day Mu was no hot iron ball, in fact it was a heavy lump of lead in my belly.

“Melt that lead!” the master commanded. But it would not melt, so next day I hammered with Mu, and came to know that its center was a brilliant, crystalline light, like a star or a diamond, so brilliant that it outlined and illuminated physical objects, dazzled my eyes, filled me with light. My body felt weightless. I thought: “This is Mu.” But the master counseled: “Hallucinations. Ignore them. Concentrate harder.”

By the end of that day there was no light, just drowsiness, infinite weariness, and Mu. Before going to bed I wrote a note to myself: “Now I am determined! If others can do it I can too! And I will! I will exhaust every bit of strength and stubborn determination.” Then I slept, with Mu blanketing dreams, Mu moving in and out with each breath.

The third day my eyes would not stay open, with each breath they closed. When I fought this off, my mind was immediately filled with problems of my family and marriage. It was a terrible struggle against both sleep and mental torment. With each breath I was determined to get hold of Mu, but it went down and down and disappeared into nothingness.

“Go deeper,” the master said. “Question ‘What is this Mu?” to the very bottom.”

Deeper and deeper I went….

My hold was torn loose and I went spinning….

To the center of the earth!

To the center of the cosmos!

To the Center.

I was There.

With the sound of the little kinhin bell I suddenly knew.

Too late to see the master that night, I rushed to the first meditation in the morning.

Questions….

Sharp voices….

Laughter….

Movement….

The master said: “Now you understand that seeing Mu is seeing God.”

I understood.

 

(Several Weeks later)

I feel clean.

I feel free.

I feel ready to live every day with zest, by choice!

I am delighted by the adventure of each moment.

I feel as though I have just awakened from a restless, disjointed dream. Everything looks different!

The world no longer rides heavily on my back. It is under my belt. I turned a somersault and swallowed it.

I am no longer restless.

At last I have what I want.

 

Canadian Housewife, Age 35

……The following day, the seventh, I went before the master once more. From the six or seven hours of continuous meditation I was so physically exhausted I could scarcely speak. Imperceptibly my mind had slipped into a state of unearthly clarity and awareness. I knew and I knew I knew. Now my inner vision was completely in focus and I responded without hesitation to all the master’s tests, after which the master, my husband, who interpreted, and I all laughed joyfully together, and I exclaimed: “it’s all so simple!”

….The days and weeks that followed were the most deeply happy and serene of my life. There was no such thing as a “problem.” Things were either done or not done, but in any case there was neither worry nor consternation. Past relationships to people which had once caused me deep disturbance I now saw with perfect understanding. For the first time in my life I was able to move like the air, in any direction, free at last from the self which had always been such a tormenting bond to me.

Six years later: One spring day as I was working in the garden the air seemed to shiver in a strange way, as though the usual sequence of time had opened into a new dimension, and I became aware that something uptowards was about to happen, if not that day, then soon. Hoping to prepare in some way for it, I doubled my regular sittings of meditation and studied Buddhist books late into each night.

A few evenings later, after carefully sifting through the Tibetan Book of the Dead and then taking my bath, I sat in front of a painting of the Buddha and listened quietly by candlelight to the slow movement of Beethoven’s A Minor Quartet, deep expression of man’s self-renunciation, and then went to bed. The next morning, just after breakfast, I suddenly felt as though I were being struck by a bolt of lightening, and I began to tremble. All at once the whole trauma of my difficult birth flashed into my mind. Like a key, this opened dark rooms of secret resentments and hidden fears, which flowed out of me like poisons. Tears gushed out and so weakened me I had to lie down. Yet a deep happiness was there….Slowly my focus changed: “I’m dead! There’s nothing to call me! There never was a me! It’s an allegory, a mental image, a pattern upon which nothing was ever modeled.” I grew dizzy with delight. Solid objects appeared as shadows, and everything my eyes fell upon was radiantly beautiful.

 

Osho

….To me it happened in a state of total relaxation – it always happens in that state. I had tried everything. And then, seeing the futility of all effort, I dropped the whole project. I forgot all about it. For seven days I lived as ordinarily as possible.

The people I used to live with were very much surprised, because this was the first time they had seen me live just an ordinary life. Otherwise my whole life was a perfect discipline.

For two years I had lived with that family, and they had known that I would get up at three o’clock in the morning, then I would go for a long four—or five-mile walk or run, and then I would take a bath in the river. Everything was absolutely routine. Even if I had a fever or I was ill, there was no difference: I would simply go on in the same way.

They had known me to sit in meditation for hours. Up to that day I had not eaten many things. I would not drink tea, coffee; I had a strict discipline about what to eat, what not to eat. When I relaxed for seven days, when I dropped the whole thing and when on the first day I woke up at nine o’clock in the morning and drank tea, the family was puzzled. They said, “What has happened? Have you fallen?” They used to think of me as a great yogi.

One picture of those days still exists. I used to use only one single piece of cloth and that was all. In the day I would cover my body with it, in the night I would use it as a blanket to cover myself. I slept on a bamboo mat. That was my whole comfort – that blanket, that bamboo mat. I had nothing – no other possessions. They were puzzled when I woke up at nine. They said, “Something is wrong. Are you very ill, seriously ill?”

I said, “No, I am not seriously ill. I have been ill for many years; now I am perfectly healthy. Now I will wake up only when sleep leaves me, and I will go to sleep only when sleep comes to me. I am no longer going to be a slave to the clock. I will eat whatsoever my body feels like eating, and I will drink whatsoever I feel like drinking.” I said, “Enough is enough.” And in seven days I completely forgot the whole project, and I forgot it forever.

And the seventh day it happened – it happened just out of nowhere. And when I laughed, the gardener heard the laughter. He used to think that I was a little bit crazy, but he had never seen me laugh in that way. He came running. He said, “What is the matter?”

I said, “Don’t be worried. You know I am crazy – now I have gone completely crazy! I am laughing at myself. Don’t feel offended. Just go back to sleep.”

....I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing; it was difficult to keep them open. Something was imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was – maybe it was going to be my death – but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die; nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful; I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome.

But something was going to happen – something like death, something very drastic, something that would be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection – something of tremendous import was just around the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open, I was drugged.

I went to sleep nearabout eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and Samadhi are similar. Only with one difference – that in Samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also – asleep and awake together. The whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed and yet a light of awareness burns within you…clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet.

I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange – as if one is torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I were both the polarities together…the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say the creator and the creation meet.

It was weird. For the first time it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a view vision to your life, a new quality.

Nearabouts twelve my eyes suddenly opened – I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration – almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it.

It was so tremendously real that everything else became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, and my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.

…..A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky – it was suffocating me. It was too much! It will kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me – it looked like that. I rushed out of the room, came out into the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth…to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenon. Even the sky is a small place for that big phenomenon. It is bigger than the sky. Even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease.

I walked toward the nearest garden. It was a totally new walk, as if gravitation had disappeared. I was walking, or I was running, or I was simply flying; it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation; I was feeling weightless – as if some energy was taking me. I was in the hands of some other energy.

For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no more an individual, for the first time the drop had fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there.

I reached the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. It was too late; it was almost one o’clock in the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter like a thief; I had to climb the gate. But something was pulling me toward the garden. It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating.

That’s what I mean when I say again and again, “float with the river, don’t push the river.” I was relaxed; I was in a let-go. I was not there, it was there, call it God, God was there. I would like to call it it, because God is too human a word and has become too dirty……

…….The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place – benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time – their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.

I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous – the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me toward itself. I had not chosen it, God himself had chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction.

It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o’ clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours, but it was infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless.

Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality – uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable.

And that day something happened that has continued – not as continuity, but it has still continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency – each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment.