...In the Zen philosophy, it is told that most of the arhats were originally
disreputable individuals who were suddenly converted, by a mystery, to Buddhism,
and became its saints...
...They were everything from horse thieves up and down, prior to the enlightenment...
...Then suddenly, they were all wonderful, enlightened beings, serving Buddha together...
...These arhats are actually, therefore, all the levels of inferior consciousness which originally
dominated us...
...They are the negative and inadequate processes from which we all suffer...
...They are the thoughts and moods and beliefs which persecute us...
...Zen realization is this flash, this moment in which the individual, without formal statement of
knowledge, suddenly becomes aware that he knows,
becomes aware of what he knows, and becomes aware of universal knowledge knowing him,
coming into relationship with him...
...Then he has the internal alchemy of truth made manifest, and in this,
he finds the key to deliverance from ERROR...
...This experience, once it has happened, can never be taken away...
...It becomes the new reality, the only reality...
...From dependence upon that which is unreal, the disciple moves to dependence upon that
which cannot fail; and by this dependence, he becomes a self-growing agent
within the pattern of existence...
Excerpted from "The Zen of the Bright Virtue"
©1991 by the Philosophical Research Society
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