Joshu, China, 778 -897, Chan Zen Teacher; Nansen, China, c. 749-c. 835, Chan Zen Teacher -
Joshu: What is the Way?
Nansen: Ordinary mind is the Way.
Joshu: Then, should we direct ourselves toward it or not?
Nansen: If you try to direct yourself toward it, you go away from it.
Joshu: If we do not try, how can we know it is the Way?
Nansen: The Way does not belong to knowing or to not knowing. Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blank consciousness. If you really attain to the Way of no doubt, it is like the great void, so vast and boundless. How, then, can there be right and wrong in the Way?
John Daido Loori (1931-2009, North America, Zen Teacher) -
Ordinary mind: the mind that sleeps when it is tired and eats when it is hungry. This is the Buddha mind, the mind of work practice.
*Mountain Record of Zen Talks
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You could ask Joshu's opening question. You might choose another word for Way (Tao). The question could be, for example, "What is truth?" or "What is God?" or "Who am I?" or "What is love?" It could even be something like, "What is that leaf?" or "Who is that guy there walking along the sidewalk?"
Nansen dips into duality to reply to a question that cannot fit anywhere. What else can he do? He says "ordinary mind." Yet, that mind is not ordinary. And it is not not-ordinary. He throws some mud. Will Joshu follow the muddy scent home? Will you?
Joshu wants to know if we can do something to direct ourselves to the Way. We might expect something like, "Sure, attend meditation, practice mindfulness, keep the precepts, ..." A Christian teacher might say, "Yes. Pray and read your Bible daily. Attend weekly worship. Observe the Church's rites and rituals. Keep the Church's teachings. Seek to follow Jesus' example, ..." If we are going somewhere, we like to know the direction we are going to be going, right?
Nansen presents one of those confusing Zen-like sayings. Essentially, "If you try to use a map to get to New York, New York, from Boston, Massachusetts, you'll end up somewhere in North Dakota."
"Well," Joshu wants to know, "if I can't get to New York City by using a map, what am I to do? I'll have no idea how to get there. I'll be lost, not knowing what direction I'm going in. So, at least I need to try to drive in the right direction." Joshu thinks there is only one direction home. He thinks, like us, we need to get somewhere. He believes if he does not know where he is and is going, then he is lost. In his mind, lost and found are opposed, and he thinks one should never be lost. He thinks one should always know. To him, not knowing means not knowing. He cannot see the in between.
Joshu does not know he can sit and relax, and discover the Way between, and discover between is everywhere. He cannot see the whole cake. He can only direct himself to a piece of the cake. What if you knew you could enjoy the entire cake? Life is like a lover saying, "Why kiss me only there, when you can kiss me everywhere?" Life does not discriminate - here is everywhere, everywhere is here. No matter how far you go, you have not gone anywhere. Still, you may go a long, long way in going nowhere.
So, Nansen says, "The Way does not belong to knowing or to not knowing. Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blank consciousness. If you really attain to the Way of no doubt, it is like the great void, so vast and boundless. How, then, can there be right and wrong in the Way?"
There is no duality in the Way, yet duality arises from the Way, so the Way is Something defying talk of form or formlessness. If you try to hide in nonduality, escaping duality in some idea of formlessness, you end up in North Dakota. If you find yourself trying to find nonduality in duality, or form, you end up in North Dakota.
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What do we do? We learn to let the Way show itself? Welcome it to come to us? Do we, then, do nothing? No. Note this Jesus saying, "Come to me, all you who toil and are heavy-loaded, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke (i.e., wisdom studies) upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest for yourselves." We do, and our doing is a making room for "vast and boundless." The doing, we learn, arises from the same "vast and boundless." This is like God discovering God.
What is the "vast and boundless"? We do not say. "Well, that does not seem to help," you might think. We cannot say, but we can know. So, we can know "the Way of no doubt." Yet, if someone asks, "What is the Way of no doubt?," we do not know. That is how we know. So, the Way is outside "know" and "don't know," while "know" and "don't know" arise within the Way. Can you, then, relax between know and don't know and see what shows itself? Can you stop grabbing for another spiritual cookie?
A difference in "know" is between knowing by intimacy and knowing by intellect. I can know the sunshine by feeling it. I can study sunshine. In the former, I might not know it, but I do. In the latter, I think I know it, for I have studied what it is. Feeling it, however, one knows it is not what one thinks it is - nothing is. In intimacy, what is is never what one had thought it to be. A challenge is to learn to be intimate-with what is arising without flipping to thinking about what it is. Thinking about what it is moves us into the past memory. Mind searches to make sense of the Ineffable. Making sense is an effort to capture. Impossible!
Intimacy is now, always fresh. Both of these modalities - knowing, knowing about - have a place in life, yet we are too often too focused on overlapping the present with the past. Life arrives, a present that wants to fly unrestricted from our conceptual cages.
This is like saying, "If you can tell me what God is, that is not God; also, if you can tell me what God is not, that, too, is not God." See? No one can see for you; you open your own eyes.
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Five years ago, I would often drive to Brunswick, Maine, to enjoy time at the swinging bridge over the Androscoggin River. The bridge connects Brunswick and Topsham. One day, standing on the bridge, I felt, as I had before, a frustration. Something in me was reaching out, trying to grasp something that seemed so real but unreachable, ungraspable. I felt a sense of ineffability that appeared when I visited the bridge. Then, one day, I relaxed, knowing my reaching out, trying to pull it to me, was not going to work. I could only be with it, something beyond my reach, as though it were teasing me. It would reveal itself as it chose to, not as I decided it should.
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In 2019, I wrote the following as part of an imaginary dialogue between a spiritual teacher and student. Possibly, this helps give some light on what I have written above -
Last winter, in Maine, I drove to the Kennebec River and took a photo of the icy waters. After returning to my cabin on Georgetown Island, I wrote the following poem, knowing there is and cannot be a concluding answer to what the Mystery is and that is appearing. Any answer, thankfully, leads onward deeper into the bright darkness of not-knowing. We learn to reverence and enjoy, and wonder, not wanting to know, relishing questions and, finally, relaxing quietly in the Silence free of words about Life, in-love-with-Life. Here, we bask in the perfume of Silence, and Silence becomes our worship.
And, if someone were to say, "And, Brian, okay, but what does that mean?" My reply would be that of that day, last winter, "I don't know." I smiled and laughed then, sitting in a chair and musing on "I don't know." The smiling, the laughing, Holy Action manifesting, Silence appearing inside the sound of holy hilarity.
epiphany "manifestation" moment-to-moment
everything a witness to something More but no one can say
Who or What that Something is dressing up
in the myriad forms that both reveal and conceal
like our being born in a cosmic game of hide-and-seek enticing, seducing ever right here, and out of reach
When the search dies in the contentment, the joy, of what has been given, discovery arises free of the search, in playfulness. Pure availability is the naturalness of the heart. [Robert] Sardello [in Silence] writes, rightly, "Silence bears the wholeness we keep looking for while we do not know exactly what we are looking for."
So, the search fulfills itself in knowing there is nothing you do not already have in potential in God, in Christ, in Love. Then, we are postured to receive, for Life to surprise us, always. Do you have to do anything for the Sun to give itself to you? No. Actually, our trying to get, to manipulate, hides Grace, but Grace never hides. So, relax, and prepare to be surprised all along the Way. Let Love lead in the Way, for Love is the Way. Yet, know Love intimately, and in giving yourself to Love, Love gives itself to you. There is already that in you drawn to a Love you cannot name, but you can invite.
