This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Fa Yang said, I don't know. Dijang said, not knowing is most intimate. This is one of the greatest teaching stories in all of Zen and one of my favorites. Zen teachers have made whole careers out of this story, just repeating it over and over again their whole lives. So what does it mean? How can we use it for our lives? That's what we want to talk about tonight.

[01:00]

So let's think about this story. Of course, in the story, Dijon is asking Fa Yan not just about pilgrimage, but about spiritual practice in general, about life in general, because after all, what is life but a pilgrimage from one nothing to another nothing? So what's the point of this journey? How come we're born? How come we have to die? How come, even though everything is just fine, it seems so damn hard? How come we're always looking for something that we think we don't have? And what do we really know of our mysterious and fleeting human experience?

[02:01]

That's what Dijang is asking Fa Yang when he says, what's the purpose of your pilgrimage? And Fa Yang makes a very honest response. No doubt, as a Buddhist monk, he could have rattled off many wonderful Buddhist answers to this question. But he decided he would just be honest. So he said, I really don't know. Maybe he thought if he said that, Dijon would tell him. You know, one thinks the teacher knows. So he said, I don't know. But Dijon just said, I don't know. That's a good answer. I don't know is most intimate. Not knowing is most intimate. And Fayan is awakened by Dijong's response.

[03:09]

And he suddenly recognizes, and this happens a lot in our practice, we suddenly recognize, maybe with a big laugh, that what we were looking for all this time, we already had. We just didn't know. The way is always right here. It's right in the place where you're standing. the next thing you see is it. In Zen, the word intimacy is a synonym for awakening or enlightenment. And I like to use the word intimacy much more. I think it's much more expressive of what we're trying to do in our practice. Zen enlightenment, sometimes they use the word realization or awakening. The trouble with all these words is they seem to imply some special state of mind or spirit, some kind of transformative mystical knowledge or experience that somehow brings us beyond life's day-to-day problems to some kind of elevated plane.

[04:29]

That's why I think the word intimacy is much better. Because intimacy sounds like we're not going beyond our lives, leaping up to some higher plateau. It sounds like we're getting closer to our lives, nearer to our living, more loving with our experience rather than somehow beyond it. So I think the word intimacy is much better to express what we're aiming at in our practice. Enlightenment is not something in me. You know, like a state of mind or an experience that I remember from long ago or some kind of thought. Enlightenment arises in my connection every moment with my experience, with what I'm meeting.

[05:37]

in that moment, when there's warmth there, in any encounter, when there's real connection. This is intimacy. This is awakening. This is what we're trying to achieve in our lives. So, how come not knowing is most intimate? Another Zen master said, the way is vast and wide. How could it ever be a matter of knowing or not knowing? Knowing is arrogance. And not knowing is stupidity. The way is beyond both of these. So this gives us a clue. It tells us that when Dijang is saying not knowing, It's not exactly the conventional idea of not knowing that he's referring to.

[06:44]

Usually when we say, you know, I don't know, what we mean by that is, I could know. Something is to be known, only I don't know it. Probably somebody else knows it, somebody smarter than I am or wiser than I am, but I don't know it. So that's too bad. We're kind of stupid. We don't know. We should be knowing. We don't. But we could take a training course. We could go to the Zen Center and train. We could improve our skills, our wisdom. Then we would know. After which, being smart, we would start our own training course. And we would invite other people and they would come and they would see how smart we were, those of us who know. And we would feel good that we know.

[07:50]

And we would, after a while, it would catch up to us, though, and we would kind of realize that we don't really know. but we would pretend that we knew. Of course we know. We are mature people of the world. We've been around. We've learned lots of things. We know plenty. We have lots of experience. And this would work pretty well up to a point, except in the middle of the night when we looked within ourselves, we would kind of realize, oh, the things that matter most about a human life entirely escape us. But that's only in the middle of the night. The next day we go forth pretending that we know.

[08:58]

Sometimes it even works to fool ourselves. We can even fool ourselves that we know. So we do that. We show up to work, to our human relationships, even our families, as if we knew what we were doing, as if we knew what was going on with our lives. We show up with our agendas, with our ideologies. We stake out our roles, our identities. We advance our skills, our viewpoints. And if anybody messes with them, we defend them. And this is how we get into lots and lots of trouble and suffering. So Dijang's not knowing is different from this. It's not the opposite of knowing. It's beyond knowing and not knowing. Or it's really not knowing and really not knowing.

[10:04]

Ultimately not knowing. When we know something, and we all know plenty, we rest in our vision of what we know, and it limits us. We can only see what our knowing will allow us to see. And in that way, our experience becomes our great enemy. Yes, our experience has shown us something about ourselves and about our lives. But right now this moment that we're facing, this situation that we're facing, this patient, this client, this person, this family member, this illness, this crisis, this task, this pain, this beauty, we have never seen this before.

[11:06]

What is it? What are we going to do? I don't know. And I bow before the beauty and uniqueness of what I'm facing right now. Not knowing I'm ready to be surprised. I'm ready to listen and understand. I'm ready to respond as needed. I'm ready to let someone else respond. I'm ready to do nothing at all, if that's the best thing. I can be informed to some extent by my past experience, but it's much better if I'm ready to let go and just find out the shape of this new moment. Experience is good, knowledge is good, wisdom is good, no doubt.

[12:10]

But the more intimate I get with what's happening, the more I can see how my knowledge, my experience, my wisdom just a little bit remove me from what's in front of me. When I know I bring myself forward, I impose my self and my experience on this moment. When I don't know, I let the moment come forward and reveal itself. That sounds good, no? Yeah. I think we like that, we Zenis. We go for that. It sounds really good. We've heard it before. All the Zen teachers say that. It says it in all the books. But how would we actually practice that?

[13:14]

How would we make it a way of life that we're actually engaged in and not just another beautiful idea from the mysterious East that we would find as another good excuse to complain about ourselves. Oh no, why am I not doing this? That's the question. So, Shizhou commented on Dijang's wonderful answer here. And he said something I think is pretty useful. In walking, in sitting, just hold to the moment before thought arises. Look into it and you'll see not seeing.

[14:18]

And then put that to one side. When you direct your effort like this, rest does not interfere with meditation study and meditation study does not interfere with rest. That is Fuzhou's instruction. So it sounds... fancy, but actually it's the simplest thing. It's the way we practice zazen. It's the way we train ourselves on our cushions. And if we train on our cushions every day and put our hearts into this, eventually, even without our intending it, it spills over into our lives. What do we do? We sit with awareness of the body. We sit with awareness of the breath. If thought and feeling arise, we let them. We don't try to get rid of them. But we don't make something out of it. We let whatever comes come and we let it go.

[15:25]

We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Goodbye. We don't take it personally. We don't get tangled up in it. A thought arising in the mind is something happening. Just like a bird singing or the town trip truck rumbling by early in the morning. Things are happening. They come, they go. All experience comes and goes, and all that we experience is our life. It's not divided up into me and everything else. It's just... What comes? What goes? Practicing this way, little by little, our old habit of making judgments about everything just doesn't hold up.

[16:30]

It just begins to fall away. And without even saying it like this, we get to the point where we forgive ourselves. We forgive ourselves for being who we are. It's okay. It's just how it is. Something coming and going. Of course we're like this. Everything is just the way it is. We don't have to divide everything up and keep score all the time. I mean, we understand. That's a bird song. That's a truck sound. That's a thought inside my mind. Everything has its place. We could say, yes, I get it.

[17:36]

The bird is outside. The thought is inside. But outside, inside... I don't know. Maybe we have a positive impulse arises in us. Maybe we have a negative impulse arises in us. We know the difference. Oh, that's a positive impulse. Good. That's a negative impulse. Not so good. But it has its place. Everything has its place. Everything that is, It's okay. And we begin to just feel that way when we practice every day. Breathing. Being present. Letting things come. Letting things go. There's another teacher who said, just affirm completely.

[18:45]

when affirming but don't settle down in affirmation just deny totally when denying but don't settle down in denial so when you train in being present and just letting things come and go you are actually training in not knowing And not knowing becomes, after a while, the background consciousness. Always there. When that consciousness is there in the background, in the foreground, of course in the practical world you make determinations and you take actions. Because that's life, isn't it? Every moment is a call. And so every moment there's a response. And you respond freely. and with all of your strength and full confidence.

[19:48]

Sometimes affirmation is called for. Sometimes denial is called for. There's really no rules. But whichever it is, we don't settle down there. We don't identify with our actions and responses and dig in. Because the background mind of not knowing that's been accumulating, you know, drop by drop by drop, day by day, breath by breath, until it becomes an ocean of mind, is always there. Always there. In walking, in sitting, just hold to the moment before thought arises. Look into it. and you'll see not seeing and then put it to one side when you direct your effort like this rest does not interfere with meditation study and meditation study does not interfere with rest all thought all impulse all action everything that arises in the mind and in this world whether we know it or not comes from not knowing in other words this world that is so

[21:14]

like a phantom, so impossible to catch and hold. This world arises moment after moment out of silence, moment after moment produced by consciousness, by God or whatever you want to call it. It rises up and passes away and is recreated every moment. When we return over and over again to awareness of body and of breath, when we come back to the fact and the feeling of actually being alive in this world, we're returning to the pre-reflective moment, this moment beyond knowing and not knowing, from which all things spring. And, you know, if you try to do this, it's frustrating. Because you're looking to do it. You're trying as if it could be done.

[22:15]

This is not something you can do. It's not something that you can intend. Yes, you make an effort. There's a huge effort involved in practicing Zen. There's a huge effort involved in being human. Never mind about practicing Zen. Every morning you get up. Every morning you exert yourself all day long and every night you fall into bed and wake up again the next morning and you do that every single day until you die. There's a big effort involved in being human. And if you practice Zen, there's a big effort involved in that. So yes, we make effort. But in the end, this happens by itself. Because we are that silence. And there isn't any other way. And everything that is... is that silence. Everything arises from that silence. And like he says, but we don't settle down in that. We don't settle down in that because it's impossible.

[23:19]

As soon as we try to settle down in it, we've created another moment of knowing, another moment of possession and identity. which is guaranteed to cause us suffering later on. So we really appreciate the almost non-existent moment before things arise. We really appreciate it. And then we just move on. We forget about it. We put it to one side. We let it go. Returning moment after moment to intimacy, to not knowing. to the simple willingness to be present with whatever comes next. Just to be there without preconceptions. And he says, when you practice like this, there is no difference between meditation and non-meditation.

[24:21]

So there's no worry about our performance. All we have to do is do our best and see what happens next. Our practice is no longer a big, exhausting effort. Even when the day comes when we have to put out a lot of energy in a big effort, it's okay because we're always among friends and we're always in a safe and beautiful situation. There's another really funny commentary to Dijang's saying of not knowing. And this commentary takes the form of a conversation between the parts of your face. Maybe you've heard this commentary before. It's very funny, I think. The mouth is talking. And it says to the nose, Well, I'm the one who does all the eating, and I'm the one who does all the talking.

[25:25]

Nothing can be more important than these two things. So what I want to know is, how come you're above me? So the nose thinks it over and quotes to the mouth an old Chinese proverb, which says, among the five mountains, the central one occupies the honorable position. That being the case, the nose goes on, and says to the eyes, how come you're above me? And the eyes say, we are like the sun and the moon. We have the power of illumination and reflection. That's why we're here. But what we want to know is, eyebrows, what are you doing above us?

[26:29]

And the eyebrows are really embarrassed by this whole conversation. They don't know anything. They don't do anything. They have no powers. They can't eat. They can't speak. They don't breathe. They don't smell. They don't hear. And there they are, you know, the highest thing on the face. So they say to the rest of the faith, we're so embarrassed, you know, we have no idea why we're up here. And we're sorry. So now there's another master who comments on this commentary. And he says, in the eyes, it's called seeing. In the ears, it's called hearing. But what's it called in the eyebrows? So imagine, I'm this great master, and I'm asking you this, and you're all sitting there dumbfounded.

[27:33]

You don't know what to say. It's a long, pregnant pause. Everybody's really freaked out. And then he answers his own question, after this long, dramatic silence. And here's what he says. In sorrow we grieve together, In happiness, we rejoice together. Everybody knows the useful function, but no one appreciates the supreme power of the useless. So, this gives me great heart, you know, having spent my life in a perfectly useless way. spending thousands of hours, who knows how many tens of thousands of hours, doing absolutely nothing like the eyebrows.

[28:35]

My whole life is like one big eyebrow, you know? So this is a very encouraging statement to me. Because it really does seem like life. When sorrow comes, and believe me, it comes, we grieve. But it's not so bad because we're grieving together. We're grieving together intimately. Even the trees are hanging low. Even the flowers are drooping. And this intimacy of grieving together makes the sorrow poignant and beautiful. And when happiness comes, because it always does if you stop blocking it we rejoice but there's no need to feel guilty about being happy or worried that somehow the happiness will be snatched away because it isn't ours we're happy intimately together with everyone and with everything

[29:58]

And if we're willing to grieve together, then we can be happy together. We don't have to hold back from our grief or our happiness. If we're happy, we understand, oh, this is wonderful and it won't last long. It'll go. Then it'll come back. Then it'll go again. Then it'll come back again. Of course. How could it be any other way? We all know there's a place for the useful function. There's a place for knowing, for learning, for skill. We should all know things. We should all have skills and take our place in the world doing something worthwhile. Without the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, the world as we know it would not appear. But without the useless function,

[31:01]

without not knowing, without the silence before arising of anything, nothing would be here at all. So to practice not knowing is most intimate, is to return to the heart of the world, moment by moment by moment, to completely renounce everything you have and come back. to the heart of the world. The eyebrows are very, very humble. They don't do anything at all. But there they are, perched at the top of the face. 920. Last time when I was talking, I knew I was going on too long when I saw the smoke coming out of Greg's ears.

[32:06]

I knew I'd gone on too long. Thank you for listening to my useless talk. Sorry to disturb your zazen. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[32:54]

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