◎Jade Tablets -10-37
◎The Mechanism for Vertical Ascent -37
◎Return from There -1
◎For the First Time, You Truly Live
Few have spoken in detail about returning from Nirvana. The probability of returning from Nirvana is low, but those believed to have returned include:
Shakyamuni Buddha, Bodhidharma, En no Gyōja, Kūkai, Zhuangzi, Lü Dongbin, Kakuban, Padmasambhava, Ikkyū, Onisaburo Deguchi, Linji Yixuan, Puhua, Dōgen, Shido Munan, Osho Bhagwan, D. T. Suzuki, and others.
"Once having crossed the realm of spiritual-physical separation, one becomes a person dwelling in a land without night."
(Onisaburo Deguchi)
"If you have truly detached from your physical body, for the first time, you truly live."
(D. T. Suzuki)
"The ultimate essence of the Great Way,
is to utterly become a dead person,
and then, according to one's will,
to do what is good."
(Zen monk Shido Munan of the Edo period)
"No man has gone up to the mountain where the gods dwell. Whoever has seen the face of the gods must die."
(Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet V)
To encounter the divine after dying a great death. Similar expressions exist in the Bible, seemingly unconcerned about returning.
The Lord said to Moses,
"But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."
(Exodus 33:20, Old Testament)
"To go from life to death is to go from nothingness to existence, from existence to nothingness, and then to decline. Therefore, stillness and purity are the perfection of virtue, and gentleness and weakness are the essentials of the Way." (Huainanzi, Yuan Dao Xun)
Furthermore,
"All things enter through one aperture, and the roots of all affairs emerge from one gate."
(Huainanzi, Yuan Dao Xun)
These are words that only someone who has returned from an experience that cannot be called an experience could utter. The one aperture is the supreme vertical path, and the root is perhaps the Sahasrara chakra.
From the Blue Cliff Record, Case 41 [Tou Tzu's Light]:
"Zen monk Zhaozhou asked the Zen monk Tou Tzu,
'What is it like when a person who has died the great death revives?'
Tou Tzu said, 'Night travel is not permitted, but one must arrive by dawn.'"
"Not permitted to travel at night" alludes to the Tang Dynasty's curfew. Night travel means remaining in a state of death. In the midst of the great death, there is great joy and great compassion, a situation beyond description, where it is said that 90% of ordinary people die. This is night travel.
To return from there with clear consciousness is to arrive by dawn. In the Ten Bulls of Zen, this corresponds to progressing from the eighth picture to the ninth and tenth. The will to return likely arises from the person's love for humanity. To master life from the side of life is such a thing.
