Don’t Know Mind

This basic teaching we have is Don’t-Know Mind. We want to know, we think we know, we think we’re supposed to know. There’s all of this bias toward knowing. But we don’t really know. We have this radical teaching – how about admitting the truth that we don’t know and go from there. If we really live that, it changes everything. 

Don’t-Know doesn’t mean stupid.  It means What Is It?  Suddenly our eyes are open, we’re vibrating with energy because we wonder, “What?”… rather than, “Oh yeah, I know that!”

Suzuki Roshi’s quote was, “A beginner’s mind is wide open and questioning. An expert’s mind is closed.” So this Not-Knowing actually gives us life.  It gives vibrancy and energy to the world we live in. This kind of I-Know shuts everything down and we get stuck. Yet all the signals from everything around us say we’re supposed to know. The competition is who knows the most, but look at the result.

We fill our minds up with all this stuff, and it gets stale and dead. Not knowing is what opens us up and comes alive. In Buddhism and in Zen, there are a lot of different ways to talk about this very same thing.  Sometimes we call it Don’t-Know Mind, sometimes we call it Beginner’s Mind, sometimes we call it A Before Thinking Mind.

It all comes down to this, (Zen Master hits the floor) Clear it away. Return to zero. What do we see, what do we smell, what do we taste, what do we touch? Everything is truth. What we know blocks the truth. Returning to not knowing opens us up.

Clear Seeing, Clear Action

The Buddha talked about clear seeing. In order to clearly see, we have to let go of what's clouding our vision. What clouds our vision is this concept of "I". The concept of "I" fixes the world in a certain way. Let go of the concept of "I" and we can perceive the moment clearly. When we can perceive the moment clearly, we can see our relationship to the moment. And if our sight is clear, and our sense of our relationship is clear, our action is a natural unfolding of the moment.  But, hold on to our opinion, keep our concept, and our ideas to keep "I" safe, then what unfolds is an old story that gets played over and over and over again.

The Meaning of Meditation

Zen literally translates as, “meditation,” so meditation is the heart of zen practice. Meditation in the dharma room, meditation when you're driving, meditation when you're sitting at the dinner table with your families, all of it. Meditation means asking the question, "What am I?", staying with don't know, and observing from a place of not knowing. What's happening right now? But if you stay in your stuck conditioned mind blaming everybody else for what's going on, it will never change. Because everything is just a repetition of what happened before. It may have a little bit of a new face because it's a new moment, but generally speaking it's just a repetition of what's happened before. It's been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But what buddhism teaches, that unless we change our karma, unless we can see who we are and act differently in this very moment, life will just keep repeating itself over and over again.

You Are Already It!

We talk about the Buddhist teaching, but the talk is to help us actualize the teaching, the practice, and our own true nature in the very moment of our lives. In many ways, this is a pretty radical teaching because everybody can do it. It's not like you have to attain some special knowledge, or some special state of being and then you can do it in your life. You can show up and your Buddha nature can be manifested. Buddha nature can be expressed in this very moment of our lives. But much of Buddhist teaching makes you feel like it's something you accrue over time. You understand it and do a lot of studying. Our teaching says you have it. You already are it. Just live. Just be. Just express. It's so easy to distance ourselves from the moment and in our practice there's no escape. Everything counts right now. Not tomorrow, not someday when I finally become something. Right now!

Right View is No View

The first of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path is clear view, or right view. Right view means clarity. Right view means letting go of "my" view to be able to perceive the moment. We all know what this is like. There are times we are involved in an argument, and in the middle of it we start laughing because we realize how stupid it is. In that moment we can see clearly. To see clearly, we have to let go of our own perspective, our own opinion of right and wrong, what I should do and what you should do. If we can let go of that, then it’s possible to have what the Buddha called Right View. Sometimes it is said, Right View is the complete Eightfold Path. If we can keep Right View which is No View, not my personal view but before my view, then it’s all taken care of. It is easy to say, hard to do.

Don't Know Is Your True Self

Our practice pushes us back to this question "What am I?". The Universe manifesting this moment is always showing us. Zen Master Seung Sahn used to always say, "Don't Know is your True Self." What does that mean? "Don't Know is your True Self." We all want something that is our true self, and then we can be comfortable. But "Don't Know is our True Self" means this Universe manifesting right now is a reflection of our true nature. How we operate in this very moment affects the whole universe. So we have an incredible responsibility in our own lives right now. The very particular thing that we do creates this world.

Do You Have What You Want?

Buddhist practice is about coming back to the source and finding a way to find that stability, so that we're not pulled and pushed around so much by everything that we like and everything we don't like. The Buddha simply said we suffer because we don't have what we want. Or we have what we want, but we're afraid to lose it. We're constantly trying to shape the world in the image that we think it should be, but it really translates into what we want. Usually we want some safety, some security.  We don't want so much change, because it's hard to handle change. Change is hitting us all the time. But change is inevitable. There's nothing we can do about it. The reality of the world is even in that moment that we have everything that we want, the next moment it's changed. There's no stability in it. So if we judge everything by likes and dislikes, we're always unhappy ultimately. But the more we can accept and work with what is, that equation of happiness changes.  Because our happiness is not only based on our likes and dislikes. There is something deeper... There is something more fundamental.

The Meaning of Buddha's Birthday

Once a year, our school celebrates Buddha's birthday. We celebrate the birth of a man who was born somewhere between 2,500 - 2,600 years ago. But the meaning of this in Zen is not celebrating a man; it's celebrating this awakening. But it's not his awakening; it's our awakening. So what is our awakening? Our awakening appears in this very moment. Buddha's enlightenment, Buddha's awakening was about waking up to the moment that we are actually in. We say very often, before this moment is a memory; after this moment is a dream. Right now, we are alive. Right now, Buddha is born. Not 2,500 years ago. Right now is the awakening of Buddha. Zen can seem esoteric, but it's not about some strange thing. It's about finding our true self and manifesting it right now in the moment we live in.

Don't Look Outside of Yourself

The Buddha's enlightenment was about realizing what we already are.  The Buddha's enlightenment wasn't about finding something outside of ourselves that suddenly now make us complete. It's finding and connecting to what we already are. We already have it.  It's not something that we need to create, or get from somebody else.  When we hear, "we already have it, don't look outside of yourself",  it can bring up a view that myself is in the boundaries of this skin.  But the confusing contradiction is that when you look really deeply, this whole universe is myself.  I don't stop at the boundaries of my skin.  So, don't look outside of yourself doesn't necessarily mean don't pay attention to everything around you.  You are it!  You and I are not separate.  Our thinking makes us separate. Our self-centered "I-ness" makes us separate.  But how do you really know where you and I begin?

Got Enlightenment?

The Buddha saw a star and got enlightenment. That's the myth of the Buddha, that's the story that's been told for 2,500 years.  Buddha had this experience. Zen Master Man Gong said, "I saw a star too and I lost enlightenment." Everybody thinks "Got Enlightenment" is what we want. But Man Gong says he lost enlightenment. What does that mean? And if you think about it, is enlightenment something you get? Or lose? How do you get it? How do you lose it? We don't know. So already, we're starting to wonder what is this thing we call enlightenment? There is this concept. There is this idea. It's been talked about for 2,500 years.  In America, we've been practicing Buddhism for 50 or 60 years. Everybody wants enlightenment. I want enlightenment, so I'll do these difficult practices because I'll get something.  But there's a big problem with that.  Who gets it? And what is it you want?  And if I want something, maybe that gets in the way of getting it. Because the Buddha's enlightenment was about the recognition of the emptiness of this sense of self.

Our conventional view is that I am here, I have this life, I can get something. But the Buddha in his enlightenment realized that himself and the whole universe were not separate. There is no separate self. Each thing in the universe is connected and a part of the whole. So to say "I separate from You" creates this false dichotomy. And out of this false dichotomy, all suffering grows.  So if Buddha got enlightenment, he already lost it. Because there's no Buddha to begin with. There's no Buddha separate from anything else.

Lost in a Drunken Stupor

Buddhism teaches us that we make our own life.  We're quick to blame other people. We're quick to make a dream life of our likes and dislikes. We fall into a fantasy, and sometimes it's said, "like a drunken stupor".  We get lost in a drunken stupor of our likes, dislikes, our opinions, our conditions. Each one of us brings all of our conditioning right into this moment, but we don't see it.  We see a reflection of it in the world around us, so we judge, and we try to fit the world into our image.  What doesn't fit, we don't like, and what does fit, we like.

So in that sense, we make our own suffering.  Or in that sense of urgency, you might say we make our own hell.  We think of hell as something that comes to us after we die, but really we're making our own hell right here, right now. We are all guilty of it, nobody escapes.  Through practice, we can find our way through it.  Through practice, through wisdom, through our own experience, we can begin to break out of the hell that we make when our conditions make the hell of our lives.

Will It Work Out?

The advise that Master Wu Kwang gave is "Pay your rent on the 1st, pay your taxes on the 15th of April, and everything will work out."  He didn't say HOW they will work out.  We all think "work out" means, "Oh everything will work out well for me." That's what goes in my head, and I imagine most everybody thinks that way.  But, everybody gets sick at some point in time, everybody gets old, everybody dies.  Anything and everything that is born into this world passes from this world. So, that's how it all works out. What are we going to do along the way?  That's the realm of practice.  Do we keep sticking our feet into the realm of suffering?  Or do we connect with our practice center, really wonder about who we are and how to live in this world and find a way.  "Enlightenment" is a beautiful word. Buddhism loves to throw it around, and nobody knows what it means.  We all have some idea of what it would be if we were enlightened, but that's just our idea.  Anything we think about it makes it too small, too limited, and too much just a creation of our human mind. Return to the practice, come back to this moment.  What am I doing right now?  And how is it possible to help the situation?

Zen is Not Self Improvement

Mind makes everything. If we don't get underneath that, it's all playing with the branches and the leaves. We can have a better life, but not really getting to the base of it. Our teaching is keep a Great Question. And the great question in Zen practice is "What Am I?". "What Am I?", you could say, is "What Is Mind?" And then bring that doubt to this very moment. We often say Zen is not really about self improvement. What is the self that you want to improve? Who are you really? That's the fundamental point. And until we really deal with that question, we are not really getting to the base of practice. Because our desires, our beliefs, and our opinions drag us around. Until we doubt them, investigate them, and use the moment as an investigatory tool, we're just playing around.

Moment to moment to moment to moment, we're being reflected and we always have an opportunity to ask the question and observe what is. As we are lost in our mind, in our thinking, our desire, our fears, our confusion, we don't see anything. It's all colored. It's all mirrors. So our teaching is to pierce through the mirror and come back to the moment.

Great Faith

Faith is a tricky word. For me, I have to bring Great Question to the word faith, because it's not, traditionally in Western religion when we think of faith, like faith in God, faith in some supernatural thing or experience outside of ourselves. Faith in Buddhism has nothing to do with anything outside of ourselves. It does not necessarily have to do with something supernatural or esoteric. In a sense, it's faith in our own true nature. It's faith in a sense that if I can be willing to let go of that certainty. And if I am willing to have the courage to meet the moment, something authentic, real and natural can emerge. Something that I may not understand. Something that may look nothing like I may expect. But there's a faith that if I just continue on, true nature will reveal itself. It's already present in all things. In the sense, you can say it's faith that using great question and great courage is enough. Not needing the certainty of an answer, but trusting the question.

One Thing

By Zen Master Dae Kwang  

Buddhism teaches us that everything is just “One Thing”. In fact, Zen means become one. However, our dualistic thinking has us conceiving of the world as a vast array of opposites: good/bad, us/them, win/lose, subject/object, life/death etc. This forms the basis of our ignorance—we think of ourselves and everything else as separate. This leads to our experience of alienation and suffering, and all of our misguided attempts to solve our problems through satisfying our desires. Buddha taught that our desires were the source of our suffering. As Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “Thinking is desire; desire leads to suffering.” So, if we can let go of our opposites thinking, its possible to return to our True Self and then help the world.

Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen and the founder of modern Zen, spent many years in hiding after he received transmission from the Fifth Patriarch. One day it came to him that he shouldn’t live a secluded life all the time; it was time for him to propagate the Dharma. So, he left the forest and traveled to the famous Dharma Nature Temple in the city of Gwang Chou, in southern China. At that time a Bhikkhu named Yen Chung, a Master of the Dharma, happened to be giving a series of lectures on the Maha Parinirvana Sutra. Hui Neng happened to overhear two monks who were arguing about a temple flag, blowing in the wind. One said the wind was moving, the other said the flag was moving. They argued back and forth futilely. “It’s not the wind or the flag that’s moving,” Hui Neng said, “its your minds that are moving.”

The whole assembly was awed by what Hui Neng said. The Bhikkhu Yen Chung then invited Hui Neng to take a seat of honor and questioned him about various difficult points in the Sutras. Seeing that his answers were precise and accurate and that they showed something more than book-knowledge, he said, “Lay Brother, you must be an extraordinary man. I was told long ago that the inheritor of the Fifth Patriarch’s robe and bowl, and the Dharma had come to the South, very likely you are that man.”

To this Hui Neng politely assented. The monk immediately bowed and asked Hui Neng to show the assembly the robe and bowl. He further asked what the Fifth Patriarch had taught him. “Apart from a discussion on the realization of True Nature,” Hui Neng replied, “he gave me no other instruction, nor did he refer to meditation or liberation.”

“Why not?” the monk asked.

“Because that would mean two ways,” Hui Neng replied. “Buddha Dharma does not have two ways.”

He asked, “What is the Buddhism without two ways?”

Hui Neng explained, “The Maha Parinirvana Sutra, which you expound, explains that Buddha-nature doesn’t have two ways. In the Sutra, King Ko Kwai Tak, a Bodhisattva, asked Buddha if those who carry out gross acts of misconduct, commit the five deadly sins, or spread heretical teaching would destroy their ‘element of goodness’ and their Buddha-nature. Buddha replied, ‘There are two kinds of ‘element of goodness’, the eternal and the non-eternal. Since Buddha-nature is neither eternal nor non-eternal, therefore their “element of goodness” is not eradicated.’ Now, Buddhism is known as not having two ways. There are good ways and evil ways, but since Buddha-nature is neither, Buddhism is known for not having two ways. From the point of view of ordinary people, the component parts of a personality (the skandhas) and factors of consciousness (the dhatus) are two separate things, but enlightened people understand that they are not dual in nature. Buddha-nature is non-dual.”

Around the time of Hui Neng, Chinese Buddhism began to develop a very interesting technique which allows us to directly experience this non-dual nature, the world of “One Thing”. This technique is the Kong-an. Here is a kong-an for you: A long time ago in China a monk asked Zen Master Kuei Shan, "What is the meaning of all the Sutras?"

Kuei Shan didn't say anything, he just raised his fist. So, I ask you, if there is just One Thing, what was Kuei Shan's meaning? Quick, tell me! Thinking isn’t going to help you.

Falling Asleep

When you fall asleep, your conditioning runs the show.  You just play things out the way conditioning would play it out.  It’s only through being alive, aware and awake in the moment that we are in, that there’s a possibility to change that. In Buddhist terminology, we say if you fall asleep then your karma, your conditioning, runs the show.  But the only time you can change your conditioning is now.  In your thoughts about the past, or even your hopes for the future, cannot change a thing.  But right in this moment, you can choose.  We’re always choosing what we do.  So if you’re awake in this moment, it’s possible to change.  So the present is the only time we have to change things.  Otherwise we just run through the old story over and over again.

What Is Correct?

Correct is not conventionally correct, because it’s not about right versus wrong.  The Buddha talked about Clear Seeing, being able to perceive the moment as it is.  When we talk about correct situation, we’re talking about perceiving the moment as it is, without adding to it our own particular view or our own particular idea.  Just seeing clearly. We call that correct. When we talk about correct relationship, we talk about what is actually the relationships present in the moment, not colored by my desire, not colored by my particular slant on things; but what actually is it? We all add something.  So this "correct" we’re talking about takes away this taint of "I".  And just see, what is it?  That’s the point the Buddha said when he talked about clear seeing.

Clear seeing is the first of The Eightfold Path.  It’s been said that if you can attain clear seeing, you’ve already got all the rest of the Eightfold Path.  Because it’s that stuckness in "I" that we get lost in.

Holding Will Kill You

If you think you are going to give up likes and dislikes, you’ll be very disappointed. But, the fundamental teaching of Zen is if you stay in your likes and dislikes, you’ll create heaven and hell. Let go of your likes and dislikes, paradise is right here. The great way is not difficult for those who don’t make distinctions. But we’re all making distinctions all the time. It’s a matter of attachment, it’s a matter of holding. It’s a natural thing to prefer one thing to another. But craving after what you like and pushing away what you don’t like creates suffering, because you actually can’t control it anyway. But if you like lentil soup as opposed to split pea soup, it’s no problem, unless split pea soup is served to you. Then your mind kicks in, and you don’t even taste the soup anymore. So it’s a matter of holding. It’s not a matter of having. The likes and dislikes don’t kill you......the holding does.

Inspiration to Practice

Keep your direction clear. There is something that moves you to practice, that points you in the direction. Then find your "try mind". Inspiration is wonderful, but if we just rely on inspiration, it fizzles out. And then we’re lost. So it’s not about inspiration or not inspiration. We say in Zen something very direct: “Just do it.” Like or dislike is what creates a prison that we live in. So if you only practice when you want to practice and then don’t practice when you don’t want to practice, that’s a fundamental problem. You are following the winds of your desire, and that’s what leads to suffering. The Buddha’s teaching is very simple. We suffer because of our desire, our anger, and our ignorance. So if our practice is based on desire, all it does is lead us to more suffering.

So what I will suggest for you is look at your life realistically and see what you can do. And then set your sights and your direction on doing that. Likes and dislikes – that’s what you will meet when you sit down. Just do it! And then, don’t be too concerned about success or failure. Your direction says do it, well… I don’t feel like it, so I didn’t do it tonight. Then tomorrow night is a new night, just do it. Just do it! Don’t get stuck in thinking, well if I didn’t do it tonight, then I am done.

Moment to moment, be fresh and alive. Just do what you set out to do. Not just for one week, not for one month, not for one year, not even for one decade. Day after day after day… moment to momenet to moment…

10,000 Years Is Right Now

The teaching is so prevalent. The guiding wisdom is all around us. All we have to do is listen.  Zen Master Sueng Sahn used to say "try, try, try for 10,000 years non-stop." 10,000 years non-stop means forever.  Forever means right now.  10,000 years is too long.  But right now, it’s possible.

Right now, what more do you need?