If you're a Zen student, you might have encountered this story (case 20 from the Book of Serenity):
Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"
Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."
Dizang said, "What is the purpose of your pilgrimage?"
Fayan said, "I don't know."
Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."
This "not knowing," which originated with Bodhidharma and runs constant in the Zen tradition, cuts against the "purpose" of every thing, completely undoing certainty.
I'm intent on certainty, despite years of Zen training. And, since intentions drive actions, certainty shows up frequently in this blog. (I'm certain of it!) Fortunately, readers frequently catch me out.
It also shows up in every other area of my life (since life is never fragmented). Fortunately, my wife and friends frequently catch me out.
Still, despite their best efforts, I continue to lean toward fixity in nearly every moment.
We can psychoanalyze this leaning, of course, and learn that it emerges from fear. And we can learn how fear emerges from attachment and aversion.
But when we commit to the study the mind, we might actually observe the movement toward certainty in each moment. Through such ongoing investigation, we might also discover the humility of not knowing.
Then we might relax with the flux of life. We might find curiosity, delight and even amazement. And we might even accept the inevitable, certain outcome of life.
When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver
(from New and Selected Poems)
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
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