Buddha’s Enlightenment

Excerpt from Case 1, Record of Transmission of Light

by Keizan Jokin-zenji

Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star and realized enlightenment. He said, “I together with all beings and the Great Earth attain the Way.”

At age nineteen, Shakyamuni leapt over the palace walls in the dead of night and shaved off his hair. After that he practiced austerities for six years. Subsequently, he sat on the indestructible seat, so immobile that spiders spun webs in his eyebrows and magpies built a nest on top of his head. Reeds grew up between his legs as he sat tranquilly and erect for six years.

At the age of thirty, on the eighth day of the twelfth month, as the morning star appeared, he was suddenly enlightened. “I together with all beings and the Great Earth attain the Way” are his first lion’s roar.

From that time on, for forty-nine years, he did not spend a day alone but preached the Dharma for the assembly constantly. He was never without a robe and begging bowl. During that time, he preached to the assembly more than three hundred and sixty times. Later he transmitted the Treasury of the Eye of Authentic Dharma to Light Drinker Great Practitioner. It has been passed down from Light Drinker through generation after generation to the present. Indeed, this is the root of the transmission and practice of the authentic Dharma.