I woke up and found that the anger was gone.  A couple of days later, when asked over the phone by my pastor, Jay Williams, I described it as “satori”.  He asked what I meant.  I recalled to him what I had read fifty years ago in a work by D. T. Suzuki, who said of satori, “Everything is the same, except that your feet are a little bit off the ground.”  Before he asked, I had not thought to describe it other than to notice in wonder that somehow my anger was gone.  Not just my anger over a recent frustration, but from every aspect of my life.  And as the days have gone by since, I have “tested the ice”, looking to see how solid this new footing really is.

And I have concluded that it will not give way, that each day it grows stronger than the day before, until now, nearly a week later, it has occurred to me that I was reborn that moment.  Yes, reborn, as in the Christian concept of ‘born again’.  It is as Suzuki said, the same after as before, only your feet are just a little off the ground.  And it is continual.  There is not one single awakening, only a first awakening.  Or more precisely, a first awakening that you recall, for as you think back you realize that the awakening has been going on continuously, moment by moment, since before you can remember.  And so, after your moment of satori, your moment of rebirth, you find that every moment brings with it another awakening, that your task at all times now is not to go to sleep, not to sink back into the unawareness that takes for granted what it sees and in so doing does not see.

But this was more than an awakening.  This was a removal of anger, and not just the recent anger, but all accumulated anger, like an old, very old, much layered and compacted tumour.  The disappearance of this hardened cyst makes every awakening moment now shimmer just a little bit with the humor and love that is present in it.  The relieving of this weight has left my feet just a little bit off the ground.