[AUDIO AND TEXT]
I woke up this morning and found myself treading water in a deep well of, “I don’t know.” I’d had a dream that featured the cast of the original 1960s TV series, “Star Trek” – you know, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley; the rest remain faceless. I have no idea why these people were in the dream; they just were. We were playing cards and gabbing at a picnic table. Go figure!
After I awoke but before anything happened, I found myself splashing about in that deep well – at first kind of wallowing, but then glorying in the muddy water. “I don’t know.” Insight!
I’d gone to sleep after reading a chapter in James Ishmael Ford’s book, If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes from a Zen Life (Wisdom Publications, 2012). James Ford, if you don’t know him, is a Zen Master and Unitarian Universalist minister and teacher, who lives in the Los Angeles area. A cool guy!
I’d just read the chapter in which Ford shares his experience of not knowing, titled “Only Don’t Know,” which is how the Korean Master Seung Sahn puts the Zen maxim, “I don’t know.” Some of you may be familiar with this fundamental teaching of Zen. To answer a question with the phrase, “I don’t know,” is a profound response in Zen practice. In this chapter, Ford Roshi quotes Case 20 of the Book of Equanimity, the Shoyoroku. In our translation, the koan reads something like this:
Jizo asked Hogen, “Where are you going, senior monk?” Hogen said, “I am on pilgrimage, wandering with the wind.” Jizo said, “What are you on pilgrimage for?” Hogen said, “I don’t know.” Jizo said, “Non-knowing is most intimate.”
In my deep well, I found that “I don’t know” kind of cracked open, and so did “Not knowing is most intimate.” In the space that opened up, a light of, “Ohhh, so that’s it!” shone through. Not knowing, in this context, is the epitome of “beginner’s mind” – of an absence of certainty that lets whatever is come into clarity, into realization. And within that crack lies true intimacy. Oneness. No separation. Nonduality.
Through the crack in the heart that is revealed by the experience and embrace of “I don’t know,” comes a closeness to oneself that seems to wipe out any feeling of separation or want or need of attainment that might have confounded us. And by oneself, I don’t mean the little self that believes and thinks it knows what it needs or wants to do, but the vast and indivisible Self out of which (and within which) our individual selves arise. It’s kind of a closeness through that little self.
This little self is our “I” – the one who wants, who questions, who searches, who on occasion sees and thinks it finds, and then watches what it sees come into being and just as quickly, change – or just disappear altogether. This is the impermanent self that we all live with daily, moment by moment.
Ford Roshi writes the following lines about the little self we’re talking about:
… I find it impossible to discern any part of me that isn’t formed by conditions ranging from my genetic makeup to my ongoing encounters with events and people. I am this [now] because of that [then]. And the ‘that’ that makes ‘this,’ changes in a heartbeat – who I am changes, sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically, with the very next addition of experience.
He reassures us that our perception of ourselves as separate and isolated beings isn’t all false. It’s obvious that I am I and you are you in any given moment. But he also brings to the fore the principle that not-knowing “takes us, each following our own trajectory, each with our own moments,” into a realm in which we are all joined. And he reminds us that, “The secret is not knowing.” That’s where the intimacy – the realized oneness, the felt non-separation – arises within and among ourselves.
Ford Roshi ends his “Only Don’t Know” chapter with these words of wisdom about the phrase, “Not knowing is most intimate.” He says that not-knowing (or non-knowing) leaves us …
Open, wide as the sky. And at the very same time, intimate, more intimate than any word can ever convey. And the way to this wisdom is simple.
Just don’t know.
Only don’t know.
That’s all it takes.
The closing verse to Shoyoroku Case 20 intimates (get it?) Ford Roshi’s words, in a way. Here:
Now, having practiced to the end, it is just like as it was at the beginning –
Having rid yourself of all intricacies, you reach the non-knowing.
Let it be short, or let it be long – you cease pruning and patching;
Follow the high, or follow the low – it levels by itself.
Richness of the family or its scarcity – you use it according to the occasion;
You walk leisurely around in your land, you go where your feet lead you.
That you set out on pilgrimage thirty years ago –
How clearly it ran counter to the fact of your two eyebrows.
“The fact of your two eyebrows.” That’s it. No need to wander after the wind or tread water trying to find your own feet. It’s just this. How much more intimate can you get?
And so, we practice.
Thank you.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 