No Knowing

In the first case of the Blue Cliff Record, Bodhidharma, who at least mythologically is credited with bringing Buddhism from India to China, was asked by the Emperor of China, "Who are you?" Bodhidharma responded, "I don't know."

In Case 20 from The Book of Equanimity, Dizang asked Fayan, “What do you think of wandering?” Fayan answered, “I don’t know.” Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”

Seung Sahn also used to encourage his students, "Only don't know!"

What is this "no knowing" that is so celebrated in Zen?

As an English, philosophy, and Zen teacher, I have a hearty appreciation of language, definitions, and concepts. Indeed, each is an important aspect of the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings.

But the Dharma really comes alive when we acknowledge the limits of our knowledge. As we read in one koan, "we can only know our consciousness till now." Our ideas about things are always retrospective. In this moment, there is something arising that we have never known. 

It is humbling and wonderful to acknowledge how limited our knowledge is even of ourselves. Though we may know the dictionary definition of "I", we, like Bodhidharma, may not fully comprehend what this little letter "I" refers to. The 10th most used word in the English language becomes a dharma gate inviting us to look more deeply.

Like Bodhidharma, we all know our names. But as Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name?" My name is Michael. But who is Michael? What is in this name other than letters? What does it point to? I can go on listing attributes, but every attribute is a relationally designated and impermanent characteristic. For example, I am a teacher only because I have students. No students, no teacher. So being a teacher is not something that exists intrinsically in my essence. Identities are provisional, born out of changing relations. Is there something that is just "me"?

Though it may have seemed dismissive and strange, Bodhidharma responded to the Emperor from a deep place. What carries this body around? "No knowing." And Fayan answered Dizang from a deep place. Rather than add anything extra, he let wandering speak for itself.

In Zen, "no knowing" is not the non-existence of thoughts or of knowledge. I know my name and birthday. I also know what I think of wandering. (I often find it quite pleasurable, especially in the woods or in ancient cities, and sometimes in my refrigerator!) Both Bodhidharma and Fayan could have told entertaining stories in response to their questioners. That is what is customary, after all. If Bodhidharma were worried about what Emperor Wu thought of him, Bodhidharma might have shared a story. Even if we are not sure about something, we tend to cover up our confusion by filling the space with stories.

But Bodhidharma and Fayan chose not to. This is because they were answering questions on a different level from our ordinary way of interacting. Their not knowing was not some kind of blankness or confusion. It was not the inability to recall facts. Rather, it was an acknowledgment that our concepts are provisional. In no longer preferencing knowledge over this sensory-world, we open beyond our conceptual maps to immeasurable reality. And it's not that this is inherently better than our conceptual maps nor of a different nature, but there is liberation in no longer being held hostage by thoughts.

When we get tangled in conceptions, we become blind. If we think we already know who our partners are, we may take them for granted and pay less attention to the emerging, magical presences before us. If we think we already know the flavor of our tea, we may never taste it again. If we think we already know who we are, we may never awaken to our true nature (which is no nature at all). As Barry Magid writes, "We must center our practice not on coming up with new answers to our questions, but on bringing to light the old answers we carry around inside us and which form the hard shell of Self that stands between us and Life" (Ending the Pursuit of Happiness, 150). No knowing means opening up beyond our ideas to how things are in this very moment.

There is an ancient Chinese story that illustrates how thoughts are just thoughts. Once there were a farmer and son who had a stallion who helped the family plow the fields. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away? What terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. Who knows?” A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a wild mare back to the farm as well. The neighbors proclaimed, “Your horse has returned and brought another horse home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. Who knows?” Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break  the mare, and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. Who knows?” A few weeks later, war broke out and soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son who was still recovering from his injury. Friends shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. Who knows?”

Like Socrates, the mark of the father's wisdom is his willingness to acknowledge that there is a bigger picture that we humans cannot comprehend, and that everything changes. The neighbors jumped to conclusions that did not prove to be true. Still, you have to give them credit for not getting stuck on their previous notions. Imagine if the neighbors had felt certain that they were right and then defended their points of view. "Of course it is bad news that your son broke his leg! Have you no compassion or love? We should take your child from you!" When we stake out a position, even when evidence suggests that there is more to the story, we often blindly defend our previous claim. There is even a name for this: confirmation bias. We can go on endlessly marshaling facts to support our point of view, even though there may be other valid ways of interpreting the situation, and even as the situation changes. Wars are waged when both sides are certain they are right.

Of course, we are the neighbors in this story. We are the ones who jump to conclusions. When we pay attention to how the mind works, we eventually see that our thoughts are just thoughts, and they, like all of our perceptions, are incomplete and biased presentations of an incomprehensible mystery. There are actually no fixed, intrinsic essences anywhere that we can pin down.

This does not mean that we can't know things provisionally. It was fine for the neighbors to state their reactions. Not knowing does not mean we have to abandon knowing what a red light means while we are driving. We need to differentiate between vegetables and weeds. We should not give up our sense of what is beneficial and harmful, nor of what is right and wrong. Without words and letters, concepts and facts, we could not survive, never mind be of service.

But imagining that our conceptions capture fixed essences or that they are in some way absolutely true closes our heart-minds to infinite possibilities. Most painfully, when we get lost in our thinking, we obscure our innate intimacy with the world.

Knowing is like a wave on the surface of the ocean. These waves are the relative truths or conceptions that we use to navigate the world. We need them to survive and distinguish skillful from harmful actions. These waves are sometimes beautiful, like a poem, and sometimes terrible, like a desire for revenge. But waves are also empty of fixed essence and ever-shapeshifting. They exist provisionally. For us human beings, such relative truths are a consequence of having brains and are not a problem unless we get lost in them. Then they can blind us to the depths of existence and make us feel disconnected and empty. Unfortunately, this is what usually happens! 

It is helpful not to be too attached to particular wave formations. Let them come, and let them go. Whether it is some sexy sense of self or a hateful condemnation, just "open the hand of thought" (Uchiyama). In letting waves simply come and go, we find ourselves opening beyond the waves to immeasurable depths. These depths are not merely another idea but are boundless reality manifesting as our life -- an intimacy beyond all compare.

This is zazen.

Nourishing Bodhisattva Practice

what to do with your goat in a drowning world

hear the helicopters come over the roof
water's up to my attic windows
and I'm stuck here with my goat
I can see my neighbor in the hole on his roof
he's got two dachsies and a tomcat
just across the rushing river is his sister
she's cradling her baby and a rooster
circling helicopters circling helicopters
will take me but not my goat
will lift me up from muck and flood
but they won't take my neighbor's dogs or cat
or his sister's baby's rooster
helicopters overhead nation to the rescue
take the people damn their friends
I'm not going without my goat
he's not going without his pets
baby won't leave without her rooster
lord oh lord why don't we have an ark
that's the helicopters leaving
that's the nation to the rescue
leaving us here in the dark
             - Andrei Codrescu

Buddhists are called by compassion to alleviate suffering in the world. While there are innumerable forms this practice can take, two that I have explored are social justice and environmentalism. But anyone who has dared to turn toward these issues can easily feel overwhelmed, like the tide is literally and figuratively rising around them, and, as a way of feeling better, slip back into denial.

For me, these issues sometimes seem utterly overwhelming and intractable, especially in the face of a White House that is so regressive. Though I may put solar panels on my house, if the Trump administration simultaneously denies the reality of global warming, pulls out of international climate agreements, and boosts coal and oil production, I can feel defeated. And as a teacher, though I may help a Latin American or Black student advance into a higher level English class, if more aggressive border patrols separate migrant families from one another and children die in record numbers while in detention, I begin to feel hopeless.

In the face of such overwhelming odds, it is tempting to turn away from these issues to avoid feeling so disheartened. We may thus swing like pendulums from feeling motivated and taking actions to feeling overwhelmed and disengaging. In moments of overwhelm, we may tell ourselves, "it's all just too much. There's actually nothing we can do to prevent institutional racism and the destruction of our planet. It's inevitable." We may even pretend that our "Buddha-nature" liberates us from caring. But this is a misunderstanding of our Buddha-nature.

As I have described, if our insight into emptiness is genuine, our compassion naturally increases. We are all interwoven. We are all part of the same systems. We breathe the same air. In awakening to the inherent interconnectedness and beauty of the world, we can't help but be moved when we see what we love being harmed. Though sometimes it offers temporary relief from this world on fire, escapism is ultimately no refuge from what actually is. If our practice is authentic, withdrawal will, in time, give way to a more honest sense of co-responsibility every time we hear about the disproportionate imprisonment and poverty you of people of color, about historic storms flooding our cities, or about the eventual potential destruction of civilization due to global warming. This sense of co-responsibility is not a flaw in practice. It is our compassion urging us to save all beings.

But how can Buddhists stay engaged with social and environmental causes in a sustainable and effective way given how intractable the issues appear? I decided to write this post for myself as encouragement in the face of tough odds. I hope that some of my advice to myself will be of some use to you.

First, for me, Facebook is not nearly enough to nourish or carry out activism. Social media stirs us into a frenzy with its extreme headlines, but the most common outcome is that I react to a few posts, maybe write one myself, and then slip back into feeling overwhelmed.

In terms of inspiring effective and persistent activism, we might begin by spending more time appreciating what we actually love. We are, for example, more inspired to protect nature when we remind ourselves of how much we cherish being in it. I'm lucky. My father took me on a tour of many of our nation's parks when I was young and brought us mountain climbing every year. I vividly recall him standing on top of mountains looking over valleys of fall foliage with tears in his eyes. My love of nature was implanted early. But in our high-tech, busy society, it is easy to lose touch with nature and our love of its beauty. We need to nourish this love. Take walks in a park among the trees. Sit on a bench and listen to the birds sing and the wind in the leaves. Watch chipmunks scurry through the ivy and chirp at one another. Listen to children play in a green field. Remember that this is their world too. By being attentive in a meditative way in the real world, by "practicing" being awake to what surrounds us, we find our inspiration to save all beings. And we can cultivate this appreciative attention on the cushion practicing zazen. There’s nothing that sustains me more than this.

Another way to nourish ourselves is to join with others doing the same work. In a culture where things may be going in a direction with which we do not agree, we can feel like whatever we do is, as one friend put it, "a squirt gun in an inferno." And we can feel quite alone, without a clue what to do. But when we join with others, we get ideas and energy from one another. Each of us can carry part of the load. This gives us hope. Thousands of buckets of water just might make a difference.

Morning Star Zen Sangha, my practice group, is initiating "Bodhisattva Practice Group” to choose a few local actions to do together. It is easier to live according to our vow to save all beings when we are supported by others with similar values. There are so many organizations and people doing excellent work. We can carry out local projects with them like challenging school boards to address the achievement gap, picking up trash off the beach, or gathering signatures for more renewable energy. Perhaps most inspiringly, when we join with others, our efforts add up. Many drops become a wave.

If our sanghas align in practice but less in activism, joining other organizations can help. Groups that advocate politically offers us a personal hope that we can sway public policies in an altruistic direction. Eli Broad offers democratic engagement as the most effective and empowering means of joining with others to transform a society. He writes in the New York Times, "When a society helps people through its shared democratic institutions, it does so on behalf of all, and in a context of equality.  Those institutions, representing those free and equal citizens, are making a collective choice of whom to help and how.  Those who receive help are not only objects of the transaction, but also subjects of it -- citizens with agency.  When help is moved into the private sphere, no matter how efficient we are told it is, the context of the helping is a relationship of inequality:  the giver and the taker, the helper and the helped, the donor and the recipient." While democratic institutions may not always deliver on our hopes, actively participating on the local, state, and national level offers the real opportunity for our society to live up to our ideals. And when we do so with coalitions, our voices multiply and reverberate.

Another thing I have been reflecting on is how our mindfulness can help us attend to issues one moment at a time. For example, we might notice the way we casually buy, use, and "recycle" plastic. But most plastic that we drop in the recycle bin is not actually recycled, and huge amounts of it end up in the oceans, dissolving and entering our food chain. (Turns out things actually are interconnected!) When we see how much we waste and the harm it causes, we can attentively curb our waste. These commitments, when shared among friends, begin to feel meaningful, like maybe we can turn the tide.

Finally, I need to remind myself to notice successes, not just failures. Even though there are many people who may buy styrofoam cups, if I don't buy one, there is one less cup for a whale to swallow. As a child, my daughter used to take the rings that held six-packs of cans together and cut them so they would not strangle sea turtles and birds. We can all become children again, taking great care of what we naturally love and feeling good about the small things we are doing. After all, each being we save is a universe unto itself!

So spend time appreciating what you love, join with others to take action, and celebrate the successes along the way. Most fundamentally, we need each other if we hope to save all beings. If we are left alone on the roof of a house and the flood waters rise, we will not be able to save ourselves, never mind those we love. But if we can build bridges to one another, we can save all beings, one being at a time.

Buddha's "Freed from Pleasure and Pain"

In the Bahiya Sutta, a wise yet humble devotee named Bahiya loses his confidence in his practice and seeks the Buddha. When he finds him, he asks three times, "Teach me." Buddha's response helps Bihaya realize and transcend the relative and absolute truths.

Buddha says, "Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: 'In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.' In this way you should train yourself, Bahiya. When, Bahiya, for you in the seen is merely what is seen... in the cognized is merely what is cognized, then, Bahiya, you will not be 'with that.' When, Bahiya, you are not 'with that,' then, Bahiya, you will not be 'in that.' When, Bahiya, you are not 'in that,' then, Bahiya, you will be neither here nor beyond nor in between the two. Just this is the end of suffering.... freed from form and formlessness. Freed from pleasure and pain."

What does it mean to be "freed from form and formlessness"?

It is important to realize the context of the Buddha's teachings. Like many people of our time, in ancient India people believed in a self with an intrinsic essence. It is true that each of us has a different story that we might say makes us who we are, and we must honor one another's stories. They deepen our compassion for ourselves and one another, even inspiring us to alleviate suffering in the world. Also, without our "relative thinking" in which we differentiate one self (or object) from another, we could not distinguish poisonous weeds from food. We would not know what to eat when we were hungry. Relative truths help us distinguish me from you and this from that. We need our relative truths, our conceptions of reality, to survive.

And, though these relative truths are helpful and necessary, they are only relative truths that are impermanent and relationally defined. Each "self" is constantly in flux and therefore has no unchanging essence. Each entity is also a dependent arising, existing in dependence on other factors, and therefore without any intrinsic essence. This lack of an unchanging, intrinsic essence Buddha called "anatman," or "no self." It is this perspective that we refer to as the absolute truth in Mahayana Buddhism.

The absolute truth is offered as medicine for people who suffer as they defend their egos, their senses of self, from inevitable change and decay. We all grow old, sick, and die. We often speak of the absolute by saying, "no." As the Heart Sutra states, from the absolute perspective there are no forms, and there is no suffering.

Both the relative and absolute expressions are true. Most western philosophers would say this is not possible. There cannot both be form and no form. After all, the rule of non-contradiction says that since these statements countermand one another, these statements cannot both be true. Hamlet's response is best: "There are far more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

When we get a glimmer of both sides of the coin, the mind tends to flip-flop between yes and no, between either this or that, between form and emptiness. We can easily get caught in either the relative side or the absolute side of the dharma, then deny the other side of the coin. Or we can get caught in seeing both sides of the coin. And this is where Buddha met Bahiya. Ever the skillful teacher at meeting students where they are, Buddha's counsel points beyond the paradox.

In actuality, "relative and absolute are altogether blended" (Robert Aitken, The Mind of Clover). Put differently, though the relative and absolute truths are both true, they are also just constructs pointing beyond themselves to the great reality, and in that sense, neither is true. Zen itself is a human creation to help reveal our true nature, which is no nature at all. Things neither exist nor don't exist. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, nor is there not suffering, nor no cause of suffering.

When we are freed from all dualities, life whispers in the trees, dances like statues of stone. There are no essences to be found anywhere, and still, there is this "dream," like shapeshifting clouds in the sky, like rainbows, like bubbles in a stream.

All we must do is receive things exactly thus, receive what is sensed without adding anything extra, think our thoughts without adding belief or disbelief, open our heart-minds without investing any fixed identity anywhere. Here self and other are the same, and both fall completely away.

Everything is exactly as it is. Emptiness is exactly form, form exactly emptiness. Practice just this, Bahiya. Just this. Free from form and formlessness, free from pleasure and pain.

Mono No Aware, Compassion for Life's Poignancy

My son is graduating from high school. He is my second and last child. My daughter graduated a few years ago and is in college. Soon, my wife Sandra and I will be empty-nesters. 

As part of a graduation present, I digitized a collection of videos from when my kids were young. Last night I watched those videos for the first time. 

Every parent thinks this, but in my case, it is true: my children were the cutest, most adorable creatures to ever walk the face of the earth.

Now, they are both quite mature adults, and they are headed into this world to make their mark. I am in awe of them both. I won't go on bragging about them. Not particularly seemly. But I am very proud. 

And I am also sad. 

A poignant nostalgia swept over me watching those videos as I transferred them to USB's to share with them. How I longed to kiss their rounded cheeks once again. The videos were filled with laughter and adventures -- trick or treating tigers and princesses, Godzilla destroying cities made of blocks, dances in puddles in summer rain, first bike rides and roller skates. Exhausting as those years may have been, I was fueled by love to engage with these two sparkling singing dancing laughing children. We played hide n' seek in the graveyard. We did treasure hunts and built ships of driftwood by the ocean. And somehow, without consciously thinking it, I felt that this family constellation would last forever. 

But now my son is off to drive across the country alone. He'll camp and hike in national parks across America. It's quiet here at home. And I am so deeply aware of how things change, of how everything is impermanent. 

My students at school also graduate and move on. I have been teaching for about 24 years. That's 24 classes of graduating seniors whom I have cared for who resettled across the world. And every year at the end of the year, I feel that goodbye.

Closer to home, both of my parents have died. I sometimes visit their graves. I can no longer ask them what I was like as a boy or where we first went biking together. I have only my own memories to remind me. And I feel memories of them slipping away. Of the many years we spent together, my mind only contains fragmented images, a few archetypal stories. These people I loved are gone. 

I am reminded of Dogen offering incense after his mother died, watching the smoke rise and ashes fall. We are touched by impermanence every moment of every day. So many moments coming and going, and we can't hold on to any of them. The present keeps slipping away. 

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is slipping away. As Buddha said, "All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature of change; there is no way to escape being separated from them"  (Upajjhatthana Sutta).

I suspect that at some point in life, all of us deeply realize that we are always saying goodbye, always parting with people, pets, places, and moments we love. 

The Japanese have a term that resonates with me. It is "mono no aware" (物の哀れ), an awareness and deep feeling of the impermanence of things that contributes to a poignancy and wistfulness at their passing, as well as a more lasting, deeper sadness about the transience of life itself. This awareness is revered as a form of deep appreciation. 

I think Americans are a bit ashamed of sadness when it comes. Kids, especially boys, are often bullied when they cry. All of us share our happy pictures on Facebook. "Look how happy I am!" I think maybe we identify happiness with success. So it has been a process for me to learn to appreciate sadness too. I think we in the US can learn from "mono no aware." It is so honest. Life is beautiful, and we lose everything we love. Cut off sadness and we cut off appreciation itself.

Even sadness is a dharma gate. When it arises, if we deny its presence, we cut ourselves in two. When we accept this touching emotion in ourselves, we open through it to the world as it is, present in these dewdrops of tears. We can be whole. 

And when we accept sadness in ourselves, we are more likely to accept sadness in others, making us more compassionate as well. After all, everyone is always losing people, things, and moments they love. We have this in common.

New moments are arising, and in these new moments we find the seeds of the past blossoming. In a very real way, nothing is ever lost. The past, present and future all exist here in the present. And still, everything is changing. The specific things that brought us joy disappear, and we feel their loss. So the joy we felt in the past becomes sadness now. And the joy we feel now is part of the sadness to come. Past, present and future are intertwined in the human heart. If we can open ourselves, we find all beings residing there. 

My son is beginning to pack his bags for his trip. I wish him great joy and adventure, not to mention a safe trip (I am a father after all). And as he drives away, there will be tears of love on my cheeks.