Up Through Clouds

See Storm And Splendour.

The image of someone rising vertically through dark rain clouds into a clear sky above them is a powerful symbol of the potential for human enlightenment.

Once, after sitting for meditation with some recurrent dark thoughts, I stood up and was instantly elated, exactly as if rising through rain clouds into a clear blue sky. I remained standing for a short while, knowing, first, that there was a place above the clouds, secondly, that I would soon be back down beneath the clouds and, thirdly, that that did not matter. That has happened once in thirty-seven years of zazen practice. I remembered it when rereading Poul Anderson's account of Ivar Frederiksen's flight through storm into splendour.