The Stick of Compassion

An excerpt from the forthcoming
Ruthless Words:
Unsentimental Quotations From
the World's Wisdom Traditions

If you were to walk into a Zen Buddhist meditation hall or 'Zendo' you may be shocked to see them engaged in an very old tradition called 'keisaku' (Japanese: kyosaku). Keisaku is a form of a 'compassionate wake up call' always administered at the request of the meditator. Either while sitting in meditation or 'zazen', the teacher will at their own discretion, strike the student on the shoulders with a long pole or stick. Swwack!

This loud and dramatic form of 'wake up call', while on the surface may appear harsh or cruel, the intention of the teacher is one of encouragement, alerting students to their mindlessness in zazen. This "reality check" represents the teachers sword of wisdom and the means to cut through delusion, or the world of thought, concept and interpretation. The moment you are struck you are left with the bare actuality of that moment, the stark, naked, direct, non-conceptual experience of aliveness. No future and therefore no hope. No past and therefore, no 'self'. All that is left is the immediacy of awareness of aliveness as such.

May the quotations in this book serve as a 'keisaku' wake up stick, compassionately smacking you awake and alive, reminding you that your Life is now, the past and future but memories and dreams appearing in the sleeping mind. Swwack!

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time
with outward and perishing things,
and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.
~ Paracelsus

Swwack!
Swwack!
Swwack!