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Yes, in this practice there are many kinds of "sudden" insight ... the deep and powerful ones in which body-mind fully drops away, and one experiences the wholeness and interidentity of all things ... but also more passing, subtle, light and gentle insights in which there is a softening of self (the movie Perfect Days which I posted about is filled with many such moments, when he sees the sky and the light pouring through the leaves ...) ... and every Zazen sitting is as sudden as sudden can be, for in that moment there is nothing else, nothing lacking, and all is realized as Buddha sitting Buddha in each moment of sitting ... Buddha right here, the Pure Land right here, Nirvana right here now ...
Some insights are profound in the moment, like a thunderstorm, and some are like dew slowly dampening one's robes ... but every water drop in both ways is "sudden."
Zen emphasizes such "sudden" insight(s) ..
... but all practice is also "gradual," as we day to day get on with the grind of refining these insights in this complicated, crazy life in Samsara, where the rubber of Dharma hits the road of life.
So, our practice in this life, for all Zen folks of every tradition, is always both sudden and gradual.
Zen was rather unique in this emphasis on both sudden and gradual, compared to some other Buddhist traditions that really are gradualist (often requiring 1000 lifetimes for any real progress.) But when Zen folks sometimes accuse each other of not being "sudden" enough, it is often just politics. Both Rinzai and Soto Zen are BOTH thoroughly sudden and thoroughly gradual too.
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