Life delineates itself on the canvas called time, and time never repeats; once gone, forever gone; and so is an act once done, it is never undone. Life is a sumiye-painting which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil painting, which can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. With a sumiye-painting any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have committed to deeds; Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going, neither before nor after. It is an act of one instant. This fleeting, unrepeatable and ungraspable character of life is delineated graphically by Zen masters who have compared it to lightning or sparks produced by percussion of stones.
The idea of direct method appealed to by masters is to get hold of this fleeting life as it flees and not after it has flown.
- D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, vol. 1
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