"Koun Yamada lived in Kamakura after the Second World War and ran a hospital and health system in Tokyo. His wife was one of the first women to get an MD in Japan. He struggled to get his fresh start by meditating on koans during his two-hour commute to Tokyo each day. One day, on the train home after a Zen retreat, he came across the line, “The mountains rivers and the great earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, are none other than the heart-mind.” He was impressed by this koan and it kept repeating itself in his thoughts. He woke at midnight and it filled his mind:
Then all at once I was struck as though by lightning, and the next instant heaven and earth crumbled and disappeared. Instantaneously, like surging waves, a tremendous delight welled up in me, a veritable hurricane of delight, as I laughed loudly and wildly: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! There’s no reasoning here, no reasoning at all! Ha, ha, ha!” The empty sky split into two, then opened its enormous mouth and began to laugh uproariously: “Ha, ha, ha!”…
I was now lying on my back. Suddenly I sat up and struck the bed with all my might and beat the floor with my feet, as if trying to smash it, all the while laughing riotously. My wife and youngest son, sleeping near me, were now awake and frightened. Covering my mouth with her hand, my wife exclaimed, “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you?” But I wasn’t aware of this till told about it afterwards. My son told me later he thought I had gone mad.
“I’ve come to enlightenment! Shakyamuni and the ancestors haven’t deceived me! They haven’t deceived me!” I remember crying out. When I calmed down I apologized to the rest of the family who had come downstairs, frightened by the commotion."
-From The Three Pillars of Zen, edited by Phillip Kapleau
Photos ~ Koun Yamada & his wife
Excerpts from: Y. KÔUN, The Gateless Gate: https://terebess.hu/zen/Mumon.pdf
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