A Song of Sudden Awakening (by Hsiang Yen)

At one stroke

Knowledge is forgotten

The need for dogma and struggle

Forever falls away

The inner spirit is lifted

To the ancient path

Far above the grip

Of worldly despair

The trackless expanse

Extends everywhere

Sights and sounds dissipate

In the presence of simple majesty

Those who reach this

Way in truth

All say it stands above

Everything else

*  *  *  *  

省悟偈

香嚴智閑 

一撃忘所知

更不假修治

動容揚古路 

不堕悄然機

處處無蹤跡

声色忘威儀

諸方達道者

咸言上上機

Drawing by Marcelo Zissu

Hsiang Yen was a master in one of the Five Houses of Chan, an accomplished scholar renowned for his knowledge of the sutras.  The story of his awakening is one of the classic accounts of sudden enlightenment, which has become a staple in the Chan and Zen traditions.  Hsiang struggled for many years with his sutra and meditation practice,  and found himself stymied by the koan from his master to explain his primordial face.  Unable to come up with a satisfactory response, Hsiang took the radical step of burning all his explanatory notes on the sutras and went off wandering.  One day out working in the fields, he heard the sound of a tile hitting the dirt and it was only then that he attained a sudden awakening.

For all of us afflicted with monkey mind, these enlightenment stories carry a powerful promise.   We may turn our backs on the sutras and burn all our notes and yet someday discover our own poem of awakening.