..续本文上一页e pure. Well, we know when were in hell; we know what that feels like and tastes like and smells like. We know how thick it is and how close to us it is. And we know what the other kinds of states are like too. And its best not to chase different states, just to be one right where you are, in whatever condition you are in.

　　One of the interesting things that we notice in a retreat is how quickly states succeed each other. We normally have the idea that if we are in hell this is a bad thing, and well have to spend a long time with a shovel, digging our way out. But this is not so. Somebody asked Nanao Sakaki, the fine poet who saw Hiroshima, How do we survive nuclear catastrophe

　　 He said, No need to survive. No need to survive hell either. Wherever you are, that can be the pure land. I have always loved Buddhist paintings in the esoteric tradition that show the sufferings of the hell realmsthey are rather like medieval Christian paintings, with flames and pitchforks and horns and so on. But there is always a little Buddha sitting in the hell realm, looking exactly like all the other demons, with horns and a big smile . . . So if you are in hell, perhaps you can be one of those demons, a Buddha demon.

　　One of the problems with human beings is the forgetting. I think if youve passed the first gate in the Way, you have set to rest doubt in your heart. But you have not necessarily set to rest forgetting. And we forget so quickly. And when we forget we do not realise that this hell realm too is pure and beautiful. So we start calling it hell, and we start calling it an obstacle and a problem. And then anything can become an attack. A sound can be a distraction instead of an opening; pain somehow seems very thick and unassailable. We need in some way to do zazen deeply enough so that we are pulled back almost involuntarily to the Way when we fall out of it. Walking the Way is sometimes called falling out of the Way.

　　Aitken Roshi came to visit recently in California and I asked him, "What are you teaching these days

　　"

　　"Well, at the beginning I teach people breath counting," he said. "You do

　　" I said. And he said, "I teach them to try not to get to ten." I thought, "I will take up that path myself."

　　Always, this is it. If you think you have turned away from it, thats not true: it is still here; it is always here. Lin-chi calls it this solitary light, this lone light, before my eyes. It cant go anywhere; it cant dim; you cant dispose of it down the sink; a disease cant take it away from you; even losing your mind, even dementia, cant deprive you of it. It is always here. In sesshin we can see that, and it looks bright. If it does not look bright, then we just notice what it does look like. And if we go into that, well sooner or later find it is the brightness. If it is foggy and unclear, go into foggy and unclear, and youll find it is there. If you have a pain in the body or a tightness in the body, and you go into the pain or the tightness, youll find something begins to shift and happen. Probably you will panic. Then youll have panic. One thing is always arising after anotherand we get stuck on trying to do the last thing. If we go into the body, fear comes upwhich is just the ego having a thrillso then we notice fear, but we keep trying to say, No, no, I want to get back to the body. But how can we do that

　　Its fear. Then we have distraction, but we want to have the fear there for a while.

　　A lot of teachers speak about fear. It is one of the common states, one way or another, in Buddhism. Fear arises because when things start to open up for us we really cant believe it. So we have to keep coming up to the gate again and again, till we believe it. Its that simple. Again and again we walk to the gate, and if we really observe that path …

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