Kensho arises spontaneously when the trained mind simply lets go without any willed intention.　It cannot therefore be the object of any desire or wanting.　Only the faith in its possibility seems important.　One may wait for years but waiting itself is a mistake betraying desire.　Yet one cannot forget the possibility nor its significance.　“Seeing the nature” means seeing the immediate universal process as right before ones eyes, a boiling egg, a flying bird, a dropped tea cup.　There is no self present then──simply . . . .　Words are transcended but the experience is never forgotten being often the very pivot upon which a life turns.　Here then is the reason for Suzuki’s insistence on a context free Zen.　Yet, shortly, the self returns and practice continues, practice within a lineage, under guidance, in humility, with deference to history.　Even great masters probably have such an experience only occasionally in their lives.　It is sufficient.

　　 Silent Illumination and koan work in Chan are thus parallel paths.　They seem to suit different people and the practitioner through experiment and experience will come to develop an affinity to one or another of them.

Western Paths

　　 Master Sheng-yen once told me that the main difference between his Chinese and his American practitioners lay in

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persistence.　A Chinese, once told how to practice, just goes and does it without question.　Since the Master said so──it will be right.　In the end, and that may only be after a long time, a profound result may arise.　A Westerner typically shows a very quick intellectual grasp of what is being demanded.  Western education enables quite complex ideas to be handled with relative ease.　But Western education also inculcates a perennially questioning mind and an individualism that seeks personal distinction.　When results do not come quickly a Westerner rarely persist into the Great Doubt but rather worries within conventional doubts: self criticism, scepticism concerning the master and the method destroys the very focus of attention he or she may have to an extent established.　This worrying, based in self concern, sustains an agitated mind which may then quite easily decide to try something else──supposedly quicker and less disturbing.

　　 In response to American needs for speed Charles Berner in the fifties created an interesting form of retreat which he styled the “Enlightenment Intensive.”　Within this practice individuals sit together in couples.　One asks the other a brief “koan” or “hua t’ou”, typically “Tell me who you are?” The recipient puts this to him/herself as “Who am I?” and has five minutes to make some response that does not necessarily have to be verbal.　The questioner remains silent or merely repeats the question.　After five minutes a bell sounds and the roles are reversed.　Each partner thus has a sequence of five minutes alternating with the other for some thirty to forty minutes.　There is then a short break until the participants reassemble to work with another individual in the same manner and with the same question.　This process runs throughout the day with only short breaks for food, maybe a walk or a brief sitting session.

　　 Typically individuals begin by describing aspects of their roles in life.　This gradually changes to comments such as “When I hear the news I often want to cry.” The responses refer increasingly to

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emotion until someone expresses that feeling directly by weeping, laughing, being sad or angry.　Clearly this is a direct statement of being at that moment.　Emotion may or may not be expressed but it is deeply felt and the sharing of life’s problems engenders an increasing trust in the group.　Sometimes things are shared that have never before seen the light of day.　Eventually a silence falls as people run out of anything to add.　Some may then realise that everything they have said is who they are.　“I’m me” may be a response which, if fully realised, leads to a letting go into an experience of wholeness that may be entirely fresh opening onto previously unsuspected freedoms.　Such moments may amount to the discovery of the “One mind” in an orthodox retreat.　Berner styled such moments as “enlightenment experiences” and their significance for the practitioner is undoubted.　Yet they may only rarely amount to “No mind” since the intentionality in this process is so strong.

　　 In exploring ways to present Zen, I trained with Jeff Love in Berner’s process and later developed it as the Western Zen Retreat in which the format of the event resembles a Buddhist retreat but the Communication Exercise, as it is called, becomes a prime method of practice.　After giving such retreats over some twenty years I can say that on average about 25% of participants have some insight into “One mind,” 70% find the experience of common humanity deeply revealing and may undertake profound changes in their life styles, a few find the practice disturbing but usually manage to complete it with a sense of an achievement and surprise in so doing.