Chapter 32 Difficult Enlightenment - Dharma is a process

What exactly is the law?According to the priest's opinion, the law is something that cannot be talked about, and its dignity cannot be doubted.The gatekeeper is employed by the law, so his status is supreme, and he cannot be judged by the eyes of the world.As an ordinary person, K can only understand the law from a "human" perspective, that is, to connect the law with the secular court, and there is no other way.But this particular Dhamma is something beyond human comprehension, infinite, and it can only be "felt".During this long trial, whenever K understood the law with a worldly heart, he went to the opposite of the law, and because he could only have a worldly heart, K's crimes became deeper and deeper.Even so, K is by no means unaware of the law itself, he has, so his attitude has been undergoing that subtle change.In him the sense of the Dhamma developed simultaneously with the misunderstanding of the emotions.Fa constantly threatens to disarm him of all arms (identity, reputation, status), and finally does.His meeting with the priest was the full disclosure of the will of the law, the misunderstanding was eliminated, and the banner of the law was planted on the body that gave up life.

The countryman is of course free. He is an insatiable fellow, and he secretly had the idea of ​​entering the gate of the law, so he embraced this delusion and found the gate of the law, and he has been sitting there ever since.In the process of waiting and pleading, suffering in pain, and in the coldness of the gatekeeper, he gradually realized the existence of the Fa.Likewise, K. was a prisoner of the same freedom the morning of his arrest.Since he has unconsciously and freely chosen the Dharma, the Dharma has also chosen him.So he had to gradually abandon everything in the world. During this period, he could do almost whatever he wanted, no matter what he did, it didn't matter in the end.He became free, bad, mean; in short, he changed from a gentleman to a sneaky villain.He only needs to be responsible for one thing, and that is the law.But the law is always hidden in the depths, and his attitude is ambiguous. He suffers from it, worries about it, and for this reason, he further abandons the value of the world invisibly.But the Dharma still doesn't show up, what it wants is a complete refuge. The only difference between K and the countryman is that K is a person in the world, while the countryman is a person in fables.The countryman in the fable is extremely devout to the law and waits wholeheartedly. In the secular world, K’s attitude towards the law is a kind of submission of resistance, that is, to resist subjectively, and the objective effect achieved is submission.He walked half-heartedly and stumbled on the path leading to the Fa.The end is the same, the process is very different.

According to the gatekeeper's understanding, what is law?The gatekeeper has never seen the Dharma, he is also secretly employed by the Dharma, and the day he guards the gate to prevent the countrymen from entering is the day he begins to experience the Dharma.The more the country people suffered and the more miserable their begging, the more genuinely the gatekeeper felt about the Fa.If it is said that he himself cannot prove the existence of the Fa, then the unchanging fanaticism of the country people, the determination to seek death, and his ruthless rejection of sticking to principles are the best proof in itself.So the law cannot be doubted.The job of the gatekeeper is to torment the countryman, while at the same time allowing him to have a small hope, so as to experience the law, defend the law, and let the law's lust be displayed through the countryman.Perhaps for him, the country comes first after the law, but that is just a belief.It can also be said that only with the country people can the law exist, the gatekeepers can be qualified as guards, and the process of law can only begin.The doorman said at the end of the process that he was going to close the door, and that was just to illustrate his profession.The door of law will disappear with the death of the countryman.

In K's case, the fabled gatekeeper is incarnated as a succession of characters—the guard, the thug, the prosecutor, the painter, the lawyer, and finally the priest.Each figure represents a stage in the Dharma process.How exciting this process is in contrast to the monotonous process of the gatekeeper in the fable.It is the emergence of truth from vagueness to clarity, from superficial contingency to essential inevitability, and each stage is accompanied by the experience of K's inner bleeding.These gatekeepers live in the secular world and serve the law at the same time. K often can't recognize their faces when he sees them. K couldn't see the Dharma in these people ("Dharma exists only in your heads"), but he always felt that there was something unusual about them.With the deepening of the process, the roles are constantly replaced, and the hidden aspects are gradually exposed; it is only when the priest appears that K fully agrees with his identity as the gatekeeper in his heart.This last gatekeeper appears to be stern, but actually gives K complete freedom. "If you come, it will accept you; if you go, it will not leave you." His subtext is: the law is never imposed on others, and everything must wait for K's own awakening.When the priest completes the task, that is when K awakens, so K awakens.The last gatekeeper uses a more comprehensive and convincing explanation to fundamentally awaken K. He not only describes his hopeless future to K like a painter and a lawyer, but also uses a fable and The discussion of the fable presents K with the whole of his existential situation, with all its possibilities, and his words contain naked truth. K., despite his inner rebellion (because he was still alive), finally acquiesced to this terrible truth.This kind of understanding did not happen suddenly, as the priest described the trial process ("The process itself will gradually become a judgment."), the process of understanding is also gradually solidified, and finally becomes a pair of iron clamps that clamp K himself .In the past, everyone was telling K the same thing that the priest said, and K didn't understand completely, but he just wanted to deceive himself and not think about it (of course, this deception was subconscious).During the course of the incident, self-awareness emerged from the subconscious more and more frequently, and doubts and wavering gradually gained the upper hand. It was not until the appearance of the priest that the secular concepts completely collapsed, self-deception was exposed by self-examination, and K fell into a lifeless in a fatal predicament.

December 1997, Talent Park