“After this, I still kept up my practice of sitting. I could now sleep a little. When I closed my eyes, a broad expanse of emptiness presented itself before them, which then assumed the form of a farmyard. Through this piece of land I walked and walked until I got thoroughly familiar with the ground. But as soon as my eyes were opened, the vision altogether disappeared. One night sitting far into the night I kept my eyes open and was aware of my sitting up in my seat. All of a sudden the sound of striking the board in front of the head-monk’s room reached my ear, which at once revealed me the ‘original man’ in full. There was then no more of that vision which appeared at the closing of my eyes. Hastily I came down from the seat and ran out into the moonlit night and went up to the garden house called Ganki, where looking up to the sky I laughed loudly, ‘Oh, how great is the Dharmakāya! Oh, how great and immense for evermore!’ “Thence my joy knew no bounds. I could not quietly sit in the Meditation Hall; I went about with no special purpose in the mountains walking this way and that. I thought of the sun and the moon traversing in a day through a space 4,000,000,000 miles wide. ‘My present abode is in China,’ I reflected then, ‘And they say the district of Yang is the centre of the earth. If so, this place must be 2,000,000,000 miles away from where the sun rises; and how is it that as soon as it comes up, its rays lose no time in striking my face?’ I reflected again, ‘The rays of my own eye must travel just as instantaneously as those of the sun as it reaches the latter; my eyes, my mind, are they not the Dharmakāya itself?’ Thinking thus, I felt all the bounds snapped and broken to pieces that had been tying me for so many ages. How many numberless years had I been sitting in the hole of ants! To-day even in every pore of my skin there lie all the Buddha-lands in the ten quarters! I thought within myself, ‘Even if I have no greater satori, I am now all sufficient unto myself.’” Here is the stanza[5.41] composed by Bukko at the great moment of satori, describing his inner feelings: “With one stroke I have completely smashed the cave of the ghosts; Behold, there rushes out the iron face of the monster Nata! Both my ears are as deaf and my tongue is tied; If thou touchest it idly, the fiery star shoots out!”[f123] VIII