..续本文上一页anscendental world and this everyday world. The _bodhisattva_, you see, who doesn”t go off into a nirvana and stay there forever and ever, but comes back and lives ordinary everyday life to help other beings to see through it, too, he doesn”t come back because he feels he has some solemn duty to help mankind and all that kind of pious cant. He comes back because he sees the two worlds are the same. He sees all other beings as buddhas. He sees them, to use a phrase of G.K. Chesterton”s, "but now a great thing in the street, seems any human nod, where move in strange democracies a million masks of god." And it”s fantastic to look at people and see that they really, deep down, are enlightened. They”re It. They”re faces of the pine. And they look at you, and they say "oh no, but I”m not pine. I”m just ordinary little me." You look at them in a funny way, and here you see the buddha nature looking out of their eyes, straight at you, and saying it”s not, and saying it quite sincerely. And that”s why, when you get up against a great guru, the Zen master, or whatever, he has a funny look in his eyes. When you say "I have a problem, guru. I”m really mixed up, I don”t understand," he looks at you in this queer way, and you think "oh dear me, he”s reading my most secret thoughts. He”s seeing all the awful things I am, all my cowardice, all my shortcomings." He isn”t doing anything of the kind; he isn”t even interested in such things. He”s looking at, if I may use Hindu terminology, he”s looking at Shiva, in you, saying "my god, Shiva, won”t you come off it

　　"

　　So then, you see, the _bodhisattva_, who is--I”m assuming quite a knowledge of Buddhism in this assembly--but the _bodhisattva_ as distinct from the pratyeka-buddha, bodhisattva doesn”t go off into nirvana, he doesn”t go off into permanant withdrawn ecstasy, he doesn”t go off into a kind of catatonic _samadhi_. That”s all right. There are people who can do that; that”s their vocation. That”s their specialty, just as a long thing is the long body of buddha, and a short thing is the short body of buddha. But if you really understand that Zen, that buddhist idea of enlightenment is not comprehended in the idea of the transcendental, neither is it comprehended in the idea of the ordinary. Not in terms with the infinite, not in terms with the finite. Not in terms of the eternal, not in terms of the temporal, because they”re all concepts. So, let me say again, I am not talking about the ordering of ordinary everyday life in a reasonable and methodical way as being schoolteacherish, and saying "if you were NICE people, that”s what you would do." For heaven”s sake, don”t be nice people. But the thing is, that unless you do have that basic framework of a certain kind of order, and a certain kind of discipline, the force of liberation will blow the world to pieces. It”s too strong a current for the wire. So then, it”s terribly important to see beyond ecstasy. Ecstasy here is the soft and lovable flesh, huggable and kissable, and that”s very good. But beyond ecstasy are bones, what we call hard facts. Hard facts of everyday life, and incidentally, we shouldn”t forget to mention the soft facts; there are many of them. But then the hard fact, it is what we mean, the world in an ordinary, everyday state of consciousness. To find out that that is really no different from the world of supreme ecstasy, well, it”s rather like this:

　　Let”s suppose, as so often happens, you think of ecstasy as insight, as seeing light. There”s a Zen poem which says

　　A sudden crash of thunder. The mind doors burst open, and there sits the ordinary old man.

　　See

　　 There”s a sudden vision. Satori! Breaking! Wowee! And the doors of the mind are blown apart, and there sits the ordinary old man. It”s just little you, you know

　　 Li…

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