:: BOOK OF THE MONTH ::

ZEN: THE DIAMOND THUNDERBOLT

“…..It is the diamond thunderbolt. It is a sudden experience, with no preparation, no rehearsal, no discipline, no path. Suddenly you open your eyes as if thunderbolt has hit you and the sleep of millions of years is broken. In that awakening you know the mystery of existence.”

A modern man picking up a book of Zen anecdotes may be excused for wondering what this “sudden experience” might be. We read of monks attaining to the culmination of a lifetime’s striving in the most mundane and unexpected ways:

“One day as he stood beside a cowpen, he suddenly had an insight.”
“One day, as he was setting out his bowl, he suddenly attained enlightenment.”
“At these words, Gazan was greatly enlightened.”

Bhagwan gives an example from an earlier time:

“Lao Tzu was sitting under a tree when as old leaf fell, just wavering; and he watched the leaf falling down from the tree, and he became enlightened. Now you can sit under any tree and you can watch thousands of leaves dropping, and you will come back home as much of an idiot as you were before, because the falling of the leaf has nothing to do with enlightenment. Lao Tzu was meditating under that tree, and his meditation was ready- any slight opportunity for opening the inner lotus, and the immense experience will explode.”

Zen means, literally meditation, and the discourses in this book are Zen brought to life. They each contain a classic story from the early days of Zen, but the telling of the story is just the beginning.

“Zen anecdotes are not something to read. As far as reading is concerned, they are worthless. They are something to be lived; that is the only way to understand them…you have to listen not with your ears but with your heart; not with your mind but with your silent being.”

The sudden experience lies in wait- in the anecdote, in Bhagwan’s effortless exploration of it, and in the exercise which follows the “few laughters” at the end. Instead of the sudden shout of “Kwatz!” or the thwack of Zen staff on shaven head, Bhagwan gives a signal and Nivedano strikes the Surdo, a Brazilian drum as big as a winecask. Seven thousand consciousnesses start inwards down the hidden road, first in vocal madness and then in silence, deeper than any on earth, a silence in which buddhas can glimpse themselves.

This book brings a taste of that silence to you.

Words, words, words;
Fluttering drizzle and snow.
Silence, silence, silence;
a roaring thunderbolt.

Swami Deva Ashik
M.A. (Oxon.)