This is what in Zen they call a mini satori. You were working for only three, four, five days and you felt such frustration that you thought ‘Drop it. Let these people go. Nothing is happening and the method is not going to work. These people are wrong… this method is wrong. It is just futile.’ Just think of a zen monk alone in his cell for fifteen or eighteen or even twenty years working, and continuously frustrated… frustrated, frustrated; nothing but frustration.
Then comes the moment after eighteen years of wasted effort… almost looks like eighteen lives. It almost looks timeless, as if he has been strug-gling for ever and for ever. And the wall remains there and nothing has happened. The whole life has gone into dust… gone to the dogs. He starts thinking to leave — enough is enough! And exact-ly in that moment the first satori happens.
Suddenly he is so full of light. Something penetrates his very core of being. He becomes illuminated. The old is gone. The person who is struggling is no more. Then something new, absolutely discontinuous with the past, has happened. This they call the first satori.
In groups also, mini satoris happen. They are mini because the effort has not been very long. By and by, as people will be getting more and more into it. I will be creating bigger groups continuing for three months or six months or one year; just a group of twenty people working continuously for one year. They will come out completely changed. You will not be able to recognise their faces as being those of the same people who had gone into the group. So, good. This has been a very beautiful experience of a mini satori. Whenever you feel that it has happened and you don’t take any credit for it, it is something spiritual. If you take credit for it, again the ego has been strengthened through it.
Go on working and more and more will become possible. But do all you can do. Never relax before that point because then it will not happen. If you think that it happens when you don’t do anything so one should just sit and not do anything, it won’t happen. Make all efforts, and more intense so that it happens after the second day. If you put all your energy into the group and it puts all its energy into the effort, even one hour’s effort can be so in-tense that it can happen. It depends on intensity.
