A similar thing happens when people meditate. If you are sitting well and feel comfortable, you might think, "Meditation is fantastic! It feels so good!" In Taiwan, a person who participated in a retreat for the first time meditated well, and he was carried away with emotion. He said it was the most wonderful thing in the world; he finally felt what it was really like to be human. His second retreat was different. He was experiencing family difficulties, and because he could not leave his problems behind, he had a horrible time. You might think that his second retreat was bad, whereas his first retreat was good, but any extreme emotion causes problems. Good experiences create attachment and craving. Bad experiences create repulsion, anger and hatred. You can experience both extremes in a single retreat. They are only feelings that the self experiences through the three poisons. There is no self apart from craving, anger and ignorance.

If you practice well, craving, anger and ignorance will fade, little by little. As the three poisons subside, you will feel less need to attach to a self. You will begin to view the narrow self as a bubble in a vast ocean, momentarily forming, rising to the surface, then breaking and merging with the water again.

What is permanent beyond this transient bubble? Your self-nature. Where and what is your self-nature? That you must discover for yourself.

When the real is experienced, there is neither person nor dharma.
In an instant the avici karma is destroyed.
If I lie to deceive sentient beings,
May my tongue be ripped out for kalpas uncountable as dust and sand.


In this stanza, Yung-chia says that even the worst karma ─ avici karma ─ can be eradicated at the moment of enlightenment. Regarding this truth, his faith is unshakeable. This is the sudden enlightenment teaching of Ch'an Buddhism. Someone once asked me how long one needed to practice to become enlightened. I replied, "As long as eons, as short as a single thought." Which do you prefer, the long route or the quick route? Most of you probably prefer the quick way.