Baptized In the Fire of Our Creations

If the mind remains in a state of fixation, there will be no occasion for it being awakened to the truth of Zen. The state of ‘Great Doubt’ as it is technically known, is the antecedent. It must be broken up and exploded into the next stage, which is looking into one’s nature or the opening of Satori (enlightenment).

The explosion, as it is nothing else, generally takes place when this finely balanced equilibrium tilts for one reason or another. A stone is thrown into a sheet of water in perfect stillness, and the disturbance at once spreads all over the surface. It is somewhat like this. A sound knocks at the gate of consciousness so tightly closed, and it at once reverberates through the entire individual. He is awakened in the most vivid sense of the word. He comes out baptized in the fire of creation. He had seen the work of God in his very workshop. The occasion may be reading a stanza, or seeing something moving, or the sense of touch irritated, when a most highly accentuated state of concentration bursts out into a Satori or enlightenment.

D.T. Suzuki in his 1926 essay, Satori explains how awareness lurks under every aspect of our self-created reality and explodes when the self is ready to experience it physically. Creativity has a private and secret side; a private nature that can illuminate choices and probabilities when it is not restricted by limited vision or the challenges that we continually create.

There are illuminations and comprehensions that develop which cannot be verbalized when a problem or challenge is manifested. Unpredictable fulfillments come from what appears to be a problem and achievements are experienced even when original issues are not solved. A level of understanding manifests; the errors we believe created the problem are actually creative food for the expansion of awareness. We are baptized in the fire of our creations and unforeseen probabilities now enrich as well as change our physical reality.

Suzuki calls this experience an act of Zen or looking into our own self nature using our joint realities physically. The nature of a multidimensional self creates an explosion like the stone that disturbs the peaceful stillness of water drops. The water like the self is never still; it changes its expressions in the every flowing stream of consciousness.