Takezi's Awakening.

I was enlightened, for what seemed like the longest time. Although to be real with you upon entering the highest states of Nirvana, time becomes a somewhat abstract and unquantifiable notion. Something that both exists and doesn't, that you can step in and out of, as if dipping your feet in a children's paddling pool. Once submerged fully, as in water, the outside world becomes blurred. Not quite there, and yet somehow more real than it has ever been before. But I digress. I am not here to tell you about the infinite bliss of meditation, and words really, as with all altered states of being, can only act as signposts - crude maps of a stretch of land you will never truly understand unless you have trodden it yourself, at which point I imagine words would fail you, too. No, I'm here to tell you about what it was that brought me out.

There is an old Zen koan about a monk and his student quibbling over a pail of water. Within the story the writer, Hakuo, states that after one enlightened breath, every breath that follows will remain effortlessly so. This is what I imagined to be true, and it was, for what seemed like an eternity. But I arrive here today with a warning to all of you would be Buddhas - if you ever arrive at these hallowed grounds - do not become complacent. The smallest, most seemingly innocuous thing can drag you kicking and snarling back into the black white tempest of Samsara. For me it was a sound:

"Bzzt."