The sound of one hand clapping part.2

So here I was in front of 30 people, I had been slapped, and very hard too I might add, around the face by my lecturer. A shock-wave went through me, the lecturer and the rest of the class. Time stood still. It was a frozen moment. The lecturer went white and was trembling, most of the class were sitting with their mouths open wide in shock!

'What had just happened here?', was the unspoken question and slowly muttering emerged from the edges of the room and people looked at each other. I looked at the lecturer who shall now be known as HIM, and I looked at the class. My mind was a still pool with a vague distant ringing of bells, probably my ear drum.

I cant exactly remember what happened next or what was said but half of the class got up and walked out of the room. The muttering was now more audible too and snippets of comments were heard. Such as; "Was that a joke of some kind?". "It's bloody outrageous I'm going to report this to the dean of the college!" You cant do these things in an anatomy lecture, surely". Slowly these discarnate voices floated out of the room and moved down the corridor.

Well I just sat back and looked and waited, and once things had settled down I went back to my seat and didn't say a word. Remember I'm an ex builder and I thought I would just wait and see what happens next, as you do. As the saying goes, when in doubt do nowt, and I was in lot of doubt indeed.

What happened next was 'HIM' just continuing with the lecture as if nothing had happened. It had now gone beyond surreal, and me being me just went along with it. The whole idea of 'one hand clapping', had left the building and a kind of intense tension and doubtfulness hovered over the proceedings.

Now I dont know what anyone else made of this situation but as I started to come back to what was a very tentative relationship with reality, my mind started to think about things. What had just happened? Was it real, did it really happen? In some bizarre way things were the way they were before the 'sound of one hand clapping' had occurred but they were also very different.

Slowly and gingerly I looked around the room and not one single soul gave a clue in their expressions as to there being anything untoward going on at all. Talk about weird!

The interesting thing for me though was/is and always shall be that the whole concept of enlightenment is based on the idea that at the very least the concept of duality ceases. Duality being the state of this and that, positive and negative, up and down etc.

It is all 'whole' and we are part of the 'one whole', you know the type of thing I mean. I know its not a very good explanation but I dont have the energy for another story on enlightenment, you can 'google' it and see what comes up.

The important thing here is that whichever way you look at this I had asked for enlightenment, and I had according to HIM, got it, or at the very least got a taster of it. And you know what, in that moment or moments after I could see my mind very clearly in this dualistic state!

For example, on the one hand, as half the class were so eager to assure me later, I had very definitely been assaulted in front of 30 witnesses by a lecturer of the college. On the other and more esoteric side of the coin, the part that more appealed to me, I had asked for enlightenment and had been given a good 'crack' at it! No joke intended there.

Which of these viewpoints my dear reader is the real one? Aha! And there you have it, my whole dilemma in a proverbial nut-case. what was I going to do now?