If you want to hide yourself in the North Star,
Turn round and fold your hands behind the South Star.”
“I have one jewel shining bright,
Long buried it was underneath worldly worries;
This morning the dusty veil is off, and restored is its lustre,
Illumining rivers and mountains and ten thousand things.”
A sufficient variety of the verses[f114] has been given here to show how they vary from one another and how it is impossible to suggest any intelligible explanation of the content of satori by merely comparing them or by analysing them. Some of them are easily understood, I suppose, as expressive of the feeling of a new revelation; but as to what that revelation itself is, it will require a certain amount of personal knowledge to be able to describe it more intelligently. In any event all these masters testify to the fact that there is such a thing in Zen as satori through which one is admitted into a new world of value. The old way of viewing things is abandoned and the world acquires a new signification. Some of them would declare that they were “deluded” or that their “previous knowledge” was thrown into oblivion, while others would confess they were hitherto unaware of a new beauty which exists in the “refreshing breeze” and in the “shining jewel.”
VII
When our consideration is limited to the objective side of satori as illustrated so far, it does not appear to be a very extraordinary thing—this opening an eye to the truth of Zen. The master makes some remarks, and if they happen to be opportune enough, the disciple will come at once to a realisation and see into a mystery hitherto undreamed of. It seems all to depend upon what kind of mood or what state of mental preparedness one is in at the moment. Zen is after all a haphazard affair, one may be tempted to think. But when we know that it took Nangaku (Nan-yüeh) eight long years to answer the question, “Who is he that thus cometh towards me?” we shall realise the fact that there was in him a great deal of mental anguish and tribulation which he had to go through with before he could come to the final solution and declare, “Even when one asserts that it is a somewhat, one misses it altogether.”[5.29] We must try to look into the psychological aspect of satori, where is revealed the inner mechanism of opening the door to the eternal secrets of the human soul. This is done best by quoting some of the masters themselves whose introspective statements are on record.
Kōhō (Kao-fêng, 1238–1285)[5.30] was one of the great masters in the latter part of the Sung dynasty. When his master first let him attend to the “Jōshu’s Mu,”[f115][5.31] he exerted himself hard on the problem. One day his master, Setsugan (Hsüeh-yen), suddenly asked him, “Who is it that carries for you this lifeless corpse of yours?”[5.32] The poor fellow did not know what to make of the question; for the master was merciless and it was usually followed by a hard knocking down. Later in the midst of his sleep one night he recalled the fact that once when he was under another master he was told to find out the ultimate signification of the statement, “All things return to one”[f116][5.33]; and this kept him up the rest of that night and through the several days and nights that succeeded. While in this state of an extreme mental tension, he found himself one day looking at Goso Hoyen’s verse on his own portrait, which partly read,[5.34]