seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

advise him to seek sanctuary in a monastery. They will, however, accept his power of
attorney while he commits himself to a sanitarium.
These, then, are the three possible destinies that confront someone who has descended
into the gap. He can return to Samsara, cauterized, branded and somewhat more grim and
less spontaneous than he was before. Or, should all the therapeutic constraints fail and he fall
back into his self-destructive ways, he can resume his career in the swamp until he succeeds
in totally destroying himself.
Or, in a lucky, precious, lucid moment, he can discern the obvious and see that life is
simply very painful and bitter and that after all his years of trying, he has completely failed to
lessen the pain or sweeten the experience. This conclusion must be reached; and it does not
matter how long a person takes to reach it, or how much he has suffered before he reaches it,
or even how much crime he has committed in the course of reaching it. It matters only that
he arrive at this understanding.
If he finds himself in pain amongst the dead and the dying, the drugged, the drunk and
the mad, and he at last cries out begging the Lord to help him, he has entered the Seventh
World of Chan.
For, the first of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths is just this: Life is bitter and painful.
Unless this Truth is understood... not accepted on faith, but known.. not studied, but
testified to... not assumed by reason, but verified by experience, absolutely and without
qualification, unless a person knows from his scalp to his toenails that life is indeed bitter and
painful, he is not even a candidate for Buddhist liberation.
The First Truth must be comprehended before the Second Truth can be revealed. To
live in Samsara is to suffer. Life under the ego's tyranny is an endless battle which cannot
end in victory. For so long as the tyrant lives, he tyrannizes us. We are whipped. Salvation,
therefore, begins with an admission of defeat. (Not with an act of contrition, as some would
have it, but merely with an admission of defeat. Contrition is second.)
A little bolder now and with a little more curiosity, the candidate may show up at a
Chan master's door saying that life as he presently knows it is not worth living and that he
seeks to invest it with something of value; or, he may say that somehow he lost his way in
life and finds himself in a place where nothing jibes, where nothing is synchronized, and
where everything seems alien and devoid of meaning. He regrets everything that he has ever
done and blames no one for his troubles but himself. He begs for any direction that will lead
him out of the hostile, sorrowful terrain. He may use the metaphors of battle and say that his
world is in ruins, that his struggle with life has left him wounded and bleeding badly, and that
he has no strength left to continue the fight. He may add, almost as a final challenge, that he
comes to Buddhism because he has nothing else to lose and nowhere else to go.
CHAPTER 6 THE GAP BETWEEN THE SIX WORLDS AND THE SEVENTH
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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