Question
Good evening, Master Kosen,
If I kiss a girl tomorrow, will I be awakened? When the blood pulses a little faster in your arteries and you feel a little more alive, surely you must awaken somewhere.
And if I practice zazen afterward, will I be practicing from satori, and will that be good?
Answer from Master Kosen
Good or bad—that is not the question.
We humans, ignorant of Buddhist wisdom, think that awakening has everything to do with understanding a concept, or that it will generate a very strong emotion and an extraordinary, supercharged hormonal secretion within us. On the contrary, it means forgetting every concept or idea whatsoever and completely releasing our emotional reactivity. Then a peaceful, luminous consciousness manifests within us, beyond our individual functioning and understanding. This in no way means conceptual understanding is bad, or that experiencing human emotions is forbidden.
Kosen