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The Sudden Leap

When, at last, we are ready to see, Reality will flash upon us, the whole universe of phenomena will be seen as it really is; its power to hamper and afflict us will be instantaneously destroyed ... and nothing will remain for us except the duty of pointing the way so that others in their turn may achieve the Ultimate Vision just as we have done.

When that momentous intuition and shift of consciousness occurs within us, we shall discover that 'the separate me' does not exist or ever has existed except in our thoughts. There will be, in that instant, the knowing that we are not our thoughts, feelings, body or personality, but the awareness of them -- Awareness that is also aware of Itself.

It will be apparent that this Awareness is perfectly quiescent, a pure void in that it is utterly without form, characteristics, opposites, plurality, subject, object or anything at all on which to lay hold; and yet that it is certainly not void in that it is the beginningless beginning and endless end of all the phenomena which from moment to moment contribute to the unceasing flux of what we call 'existence'.

This void is at once the container and the contained, the one and the many, the neither-one-nor-many, the doomed and the deathless, relativity and ultimate truth, Samsara and Nirvana, without a hairsbreadth of difference between any of these or other pairs.

Perceiving this, we shall seem to others to have taken a sudden leap, as though from somewhere to nowhere. Indeed, 'sudden leap', though inaccurate, is perhaps the best term with which to describe the process. Yet, in truth, we shall have leapt from nowhere to nowhere; hence, we shall not have leapt at all; nor will there be or has there ever been any 'we' to make the leap!

Nothing will have changed except 'our' point of view. What was formerly misperceived in the light of our little egos, 'we' shall now rightly perceive in the glorious light of egolessness (the Light of Consciousness).

Thenceforward, though 'our' environment - the surrounding flux - will continue its moment-to-moment transformations as before, 'we' shall be capable of seeing all this play of phenomena as tiny ripples upon the surface of changelessness - 'we' shall clearly recognize the changelessness of change!

As a mirror impartially reflects green and red, black and white, without being to the smallest extent affected by any of them; as the spray of a waterfall reflects all the colours of the rainbow without losing its colourless purity; as dreamers behold acts of love and violence without moving so much as a hand; so does the mind of an Enlightened One react to the ceaseless play of phenomera.

All of this will be more or less so in the deepest spiritoal sense, and yet we should beware of taking these analogies' of mirror, spray and dreamer too concretely, for even a mirror suggests a plurality of the reflector, the act of reflecting and the thing reflected, whereas these three do not in truth differ from one another; so that, beyond a certain point, even the mirror is a mere analogy - another raft to be discarded once the river is crossed.

Adapted from the introduction to: The Zen Teaching of Hui Hai:
On Sudden Illumination by John Blofeld (1913-87)