Am I scaring you?

(3)

Shall I do another picture? Yez?
Ok, this is Daruma. His eyes are wide open because long ago He cut off his eyelids. As you can see, His right eye is not as well-defined as His left eye, probably because some time elapsed between the wish and its fulfillment, and the right eye was the first eye to be filled in.

Daruma cut off his eyelids so that He would never sleep (being gassed here) again. 'Sleep' is the Zen term for the average human psychological state. In Zen, to be 'asleep' is to be 'normal,' and to be 'awake' is to be 'abnormal' (Zen normal).

Daruma discovered caffine, they say, and the absense of eyelids signifies the awakened state conferred by caffine, which is symbolic of the awakened state conferred by meditation. To 'be awake' in Zen does not mean to be 'sleep deprived,' but to be 'fully conscious.'

In Zen, 'to awake' means to rise above biological mechanics and to become spiritual. You will find this same idea in Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. You create your soul by becoming awake, otherwise you really have no soul, and you will die like a dog, forever.

Am I scaring you?