It's not possible to know all there is to know. This world is oh-so vast, complicated, always changing. I do not know what next week will bring, nor even a minute from now. I do not know what's happening outside this room, nor deep within my body's own cells. I do not know, and am unlikely ever to know, how to fly a plane. I can't recall the 'capital of Laos' (I once knew, and I've been there too.) I do not know if life exists on other planets, although I suspect so. I do not know (although I hope) that we solve 'Global Warming,' nobody knows what the human race will become and, of course, nobody knows how long we each have to walk this earth. You can't just 'Google' most of that!
Zen teaches us acceptance, to go with the flow, and one of the best things to accept is our own incredible ignorance, and to flow along with not knowing most things. I believe in 'lifetime learning,' but it never ends. In fact, it is foolish, if not downright dangerous, to think you know everything, let alone more than you truly know.
Yet, I assure you, Zen folks can know EVERYTHING! ... Everything, and ALL THINGS with nothing left out!
And we're not fools!
In the famous Koan, Bodhidharma was asked by the Emperor Wu, "Who are you?" Bodhidharma replied, "I Don't Know." In Chinese language, one tends to leave the subject out, so probably he just said, "Don't Know." But this "Don't Know" does not mean that Old B'Dharma was so daft as not to know his own name. Nor does it signal some mid-life identity crisis, nor "bonk on the head" amnesia like in the movies. In fact, this "Don't Know" is the profound "Knowing" which comes when the "I" is dropped out of the equation. Then, there is no separate subject to do the knowing, no separate object to be known, but only Knowing which leaps right through all knower and known. Demons cannot find this "Don't Know Mind," for there is nothing apart to be sought, no angels fighting demons, no fight.
In Shikantaza Zazen, we sit while dropping all questions and ponderings. However, our dropping of questions is not a giving up on knowing. Rather, Shikantaza is the "Just Sitting" in which "All Questions Are Asked And Answered" simply by "Sitting for Sitting's Sake." The question is to sit, the answer is to sit, thus no question remains while sitting. No separate sitter and nothing apart to be sat, only Sitting that is Knowing. In some Zen circles, "Only Don't Know" has become a Koan for one to sit as, but I assure you that it is not a call for us to sit around and wallow in our stupidity, no resigned excuse to remain in ignorance. Rather, "Only Don't Know" and "Just Sitting" are each a clarion call to the Wisdom of Everything Knowing Everything.
How can Everything Know Everything, and ALL THINGS with nothing left out?
Imagine a sailor, far out to sea: The sailor cannot know the whole ocean, every bend of shore, the name and location of each fish in the deep, the number and shape of all the grains of sand on every beach, what is over the horizon, where the waters come from and where they might flow tomorrow ...
... and yet, and yet ...
... dipping her finger in the brine, putting it to her tongue, she can taste it all, the whole sea. What is more, that sailor can know that boat and sail, wind and waters, shores and sand, fish and horizon, today and tomorrow and the sailor too are whole, just flowing ... a single flowing. So it is in our sailing this cosmos.
On that fingertip, everything is knowing everything.
Or taste a sip of tea, no other thought, and there is nothing in the world but this taste. This taste is the whole world too.
I don't mean to come across as some Zen "know-it-all," but let me tell you this:
Some questions are answered very clearly by their very dropping. Asking "How many flying horned rabbits exist on Mars" is a silly question, because we create the whole problem just by our own imaginings. Likewise, Zen folks come to know that many basic questions about life equally vanish or (better said) are nicely resolved when we drop the question itself, with very enlightening answers presented thereby. Examples include, "Where did I come from before I was born?" and "Where will I go when I die?," also "How does yesterday become tomorrow?" While these are very good questions, and we are right to wonder how we popped up here in this life for a time, all to seemingly vanish down the road, and about what happens then, a very clear answer arises in Zen practice when we drop the very notions of "coming" "staying" "going" "I" "where" "now" and "then." Returning to the ocean, our questions are much like a wave asking whence it has arisen, whither it shall return after rolling onto the shore. Good questions, yet the wave has always been just the ocean, waters of these waters, each the sea's timeless moment, and so long as the ocean doth ocean, the waters rolling rolling, the wave has neither come nor gone, and continues as the rolling rolling.
Our sailor tastes that she and all things are this rolling rolling too.
Oh, this universe is vast, incredibly vast, and seems to grow vaster with each new telescope launched. We momentarily occupy a speck of dust, circling one star in a sea of countless stars. Billions of years pass, within which our lives are not even half a blink of the eye. We are made of atoms soon to decay, are barely bigger than ants, and barely smarter in our trying to understand it all.
But here is a funny twist:
For the Zen Buddhist, the cosmos is not vast, we are not small, the stars are not distant, and time is as a dream. You see, we are the universe and stars, the stars and time just us. Precisely us, and us precisely them, as if the tree is me growing from the ground, the bird is you flying in the sky, while the star is the tree and bird (and you and me) shining in space. I don't mean merely that we are parts of the whole, and I don't simply point to the fact that we are made of "star dust," those atoms, although that is true too. I mean that we are the cosmos and all it contains, as much as you are your body and all it contains. Your body is you, your heart and hearing is you, every hair on your head is precisely you, and thus are you the stars in the sky, the ants and atoms, galaxies, yesterday and a trillion years from now ... everything. Thus, what is vast is our vastness, what is small is our smallness ... and time is our time too.
We each stand at the very center of this universe, a beautiful singularity twirling and expanding, because every point is "a" center, and each and all are "the" center which is the whole, much as every point on the surface of a sphere is as much a center of the sphere's surface as all others, and each point is the sphere itself.
Consider that the next time you gaze into the night sky, feeling so small: You are just looking at the back of your own hand, standing at the center of the universe.
Nor is anything to be compared to anything else, for each and all are each a "universe unto themselves," thus an atom or ant is a universe of atom, a universe of ant, and so for you and me and all things. The Zen and Mahayana masters knew that all composite things are empty of separate existence, yet the outcome is a Wholeness which also pours in and out of all the separate things. Each is the Wholeness, through and through, with not a drop left out ... flowing flowing. Thus, each contains the whole thing, and each contains each other ... as if ants fully hold the stars within their bellies, and the whole universe too. Do not say what is far or distant, long ago or deep in the future ... for all is without distance, measure and time. The universe remains a singularity, ever changing, ever flowing, nothing outside to compare, nothing inside that is not the whole.
So radically nothing apart is this, thus nothing to compare, that even words like "Universe" or "Reality" or "Everything" or "Wholeness" get in the way, that is how very Wholly Holy Whole this is. Best to sit Zazen, dropping the words, dropping the "I" and the "You" and the "Universe," dropping away everything and anything outside the Sitting itself, letting all and all things flow as each single thing and all, leaving only this Knowing.
No, Zen folks cannot know everything, but this everything one can know.
Gassho, J
stlah
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