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Chapter 16: Zen Is an Experience

Now scientists, particularly brain experts, have discovered that if certain spots in the brain are touched by electrodes, certain memories become immediately active. Those memories are lying there deep frozen; touched by the electrode, they start becoming alive. A very strange experience. If your brain is touched by an electrode at the point where the rose memory is lying deep, suddenly you will forget the present; you will be in the same garden again. Maybe twenty years have passed, but it will be again as real as if you were in the garden again: the same smell, the same wind, the same coolness, the same flower. And if the electrode is taken out, the memory disappears. Put the electrode back again in the same spot and again the memory starts revealing itself.

And one thing more has been discovered: you can do it thousands of times. Again and again the same memory comes, and again and again the memory repeats itself from the very beginning. The moment you remove the electrode it seems that there is an automatic rewinding; the memory coils back into the same original state. Touch it again with the electrode - as the electricity starts flowing the memory begins from the beginning: you enter again into the garden.and the same sequence of events. And this can be done thousands of times. In fact, scientists say there is no limit to it; it can be done millions of times.


.when the haze is removed, says Yoka, the light shines forth.
Thus when each individual spirit and the objective world
are forgotten and emptied, suchness affirms truth.

When all is emptied - you have forgotten all the memories, you have forgotten even your individual existence, your separate existence; you are no more an island, you have melted into the whole; you are not like an ice cube floating in the water, you have become water itself - this is what Zen is. Then suddenly, truth is revealed.

Vision is clear, says Yoka.

These four lines are of tremendous importance:

Vision is clear.
But there are no objects to see.
There is no person.
There is no Buddha.

This is the ultimate declaration of Zen. This is the lion’s roar.

Vision is clear. This is a strange phenomenon. When there are objects to see, your vision is not clear because those objects are making impressions on you. Your vision cannot be clear; it is full of mist. When vision is clear, there are no objects at all, just clarity, just pure consciousness; no content, just seeing and nothing to see, just watchfulness and nothing to watch. A pure observer, a pure witness and nothing to witness.

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