..续本文上一页ust became the tree or the moss or the stones. She had always remembered this and then had found zen and realized that this was a way to enter that world, to consolidate that world. So she really, badly wanted to get enlightened and was really gung ho, and nothing she did really helped. She”d meditate, but sesshin after sesshin she wouldn”t be enlightened afterwards and be very disappointed and depressed. As I used to be, too. There was nothing worse than the closing ceremony of sesshin, I remember. Some of the worst moments of my life. I see people going through it now and I just feel for them so much. So anyway, she really flung herself into it and she had a real gift for meditation. I always thought she had a better samadhi gift than I did. She flung herself into it and time and space disappeared for her on day one. That”s what it looked from the inside and she went through the whole thing in a kind of trance. From the outside she was throwing up all the time and she had a fever and she had diarrhea. She was rooming with a bunch of women, about eight women in a big room, which fortunately had a bathroom. They would carry her to and fro from the zendo, to help her, and help her out of bed. She desperately wanted to get to the zendo and she”d start moving toward the zendo and they”d help her. They”d carry her out of the zendo when she fell apart, when she was weeping with tears and snot. Suddenly, on about day five of sesshin, she was sitting in the dokusan line, which is in a big hall in Maui, and there was a big painting of Kuan-yin [Chinese version of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara] in front of her on the wall. The dokusan room was set up so you looked at that wall and the painting and then you walked around the corner to go to dokusan. She was sitting there looking at the wall, and she suddenly realized she was looking at the wall, which was her first moment of consciousness in five days. She realized that the wall came down and exactly met the floor and then she burst out laughing. That was her enlightenment realization. The wall meets the floor! She ran into the roshi laughing and told him, "The wall meets the floor!"

　　One of the things I want to emphasize here is the plainness and the ordinariness of what we discover. After all there”s nothing much to Huang-po”s [Huang-po Hsi-yŸn (Jap. Obaku Kiun)] dharma, is there

　　 After all the wall meets the floor. The crow goes, `caw, caw.” The birds just go, `cheep, cheep; cheep, cheep.” Everything is plain and clear before your eyes.

　　I tell you these stories because I think the heart likes to hear stories sometimes and not just be told do more zazen and shut up. But actually do more zazen and shut up are the best instructions. Don”t cling to the stories because really it will be different for you. Really some people do open slowly.

　　One of Aitken Roshi”s virtues is his candor, I have always thought. I think it may be published in one of his books. It”s the story about his own lack of enlightenment experience. Something shifted in him during a sesshin once in the mid sixties with Soen Nakagawa Roshi. Soen Roshi gave a "Kaatz!" in the dojo and Aitken Roshi found himself joining in. This "Kaatz!" came out of him. Aitken Roshi was very good about dojo behavior so it was not the sort of thing he was wont to do, but this "Kaatz!" came out of him. He was sitting facing in and Soen Roshi had him turnaround and he hit him with the kyasaku over and over again and calling out "Kaatz! Kaatz! Kaatz!" in the dojo. Aitken Roshi was just exhausted after all that and went to bed and this Kaatz! just kept coming out of him. But then nothing happened, you know. And so he felt like, "Well, back to the zafu," and went on. He essentially considered himself a zen failure for many years, as I”m sure …

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