841Uif

230 I ENLIGHTENMENT EXPERIENCESwhelming forcefulness; and by comparison I felt insignificant andhollow. "If through being deceived I can reach his level of development, I won't mind the deception," I concluded, and decided to sitfaithfully as he instructed.The fo urth and fifth days passed. The pain in my legs persisted, butmy mind had now become more stable, even though I was experiencingvisions of one kind and another. Gradually I began to feel enthusiasticabout sitting. Came the sixth day. In the anteroom whereI was kneeling awaiting my turn to go to dokusan I had a small joyfulexperience. Just in front of my knees I saw a large post and the leg ofa small table overlapping. At that moment I felt the post to be theroshi and the small leg to be myself. Suddenly this insight came to me:The post as a post is occupying all of heaven and earth, and the leg ofthe table as the leg of a table is doing the same. The roshi as roshi andI as I fill the entire cosmos. Is there emptiness anywhere? With thatI laughed heartily from the bottom of my belly.Briskly entering the roshi's room at dokusan, I presented him myexperience. "What is the value of such a blank insight? Don'tdream!" he said brusquely, and dismissed me. Though it may havebeen a hallucination, the joy of that moment has never left me.Thereafter whenever I came before the roshi I wasn't afraid of him.After this first sesshin at Nippon-ji I attended one sesshin three yearslater at Hosshin-ji, but I was unsuccessful in attaining enlightenment.One night during the summer of that year while single-mindedly devotingmyself to the practice of my koan, Mu, I experienced a state inwhich I felt as though I were looking at the vast, utterly transparentsky, and the next moment was able to penetrate the world of Muwith an awareness that was clear and sharp. At once I went to seeTaji-roshi and asked him to receive me in dokusan. He confirmed myrealization after I had made prompt reply to: "How old is Kannon?""Cut the word Mu into three," and other tests. Whereupon he instructedme as follows:"There is a tremendous difference between shallow and deep realization, and these different levels are depicted in the Ten OxherdingPictures.1 The depth of your enlightenment is no greater than thatshown in the third picture, namely, that of seeing the Ox. In other1 See section vn1.