I want to talk today about the Spirit of Inquiry in Spiritual Practice. For the vast majority of us, what drives us to pursue self realization through meditation is the possibility of being released from suffering. Along with that, is often the wonder and fascination with the mystery of, why are here in the first place? what am I actually?, what is actually here for us to inquire about?
If we're really honest w/ourselves, it becomes clear at some point that relying on any ideas from the mind doesn't free us from our fears, and in fact just creates more suffering. So how do we free ourselves from the obsession of attaching to our ideas about what salvation is, what enlightenment is, etc.? I remember reading over 30 years ago, the Zen master Huang Po. He said, "That which is right before you is Buddha Nature, the ultimate reality, in all its fullness, utterly complete." It's always been here, all we have to do is let go of our holding on to the idea that we exist separately from it. In a sense, this saying of Huang Po has been my koan, or riddle, that I've been investigating for over 30 years, and still am in some subtle ways.
So how do we let go? How do we let go of trying to control our experience? After many years of asking myself this question, at one point it became that clear that just the asking of this question was my ego wanting to stay in control. Ironic, but inescapably true. So nobody can really tell you how to let go, the closest I can come to putting it into words is, stop making an effort to hold on. Whenever you become aware of the effort to think in meditation, stop making that effort. Again and again, we need to just be aware of the effort to make demands on the moment, and to stop making that effort, not by trying to get rid of anything, or making some other effort, but by just accepting what is present to consciousness in this moment. This doesn't mean that at some point we will stop being affected by life, in fact, as our fear of life subsides, we may experience more intense emotions, but at the same time, not be as bothered by them. And this doesn't mean that will not be able to act, or that we'll take a more passive attitude towards life. It means with less emotional baggage to sort through, we'll be freer to act appropriately, and our actions will more and more be driven by the spirit of letting go, not by our attachments to self. Our thinking will be straightforward, clear, and without anything extra added on to it.
People sometimes ask me, "What is it like when you stop trying to control your experience?" Again, it's not easy to put into words, but it's like experiencing a death, the death of the one who needs to hold on. It's not an anxious feeling of death, but more of a relief, the depth of that relief seems unfathomable. The sense of me always survives that death, we need that sense of me to function in a body. But gradually we develop the ability to see that sense of me for what it really is, nothing, meaning no-thing, no separate entity.
I remember one teacher asking "How badly do you want to wake up?" My reply was how badly can you want to wake up? You can only want to wake up so much, perhaps many of us need to consciously try as hard as we can to attain something, before it dawns on us that what we actually are, can't by its very nature be an acquisition. So you don't wake up, by that I mean awakening doesn't happen by your effort to wake up. Something else wants us to wake up, call it God, call it the Source, or call it life itself wanting us to wake up. By just being willing to be this no-thing, no separate entity, we start to wake up. Remember the biblical saying, "Be still and know that I am God."
The good news is that we already have direct experience of true nature, only our ideas about it can appear to hide it. Truly it's not hidden. But any real teacher will tell you not to take their word for it, as if you could anyway, discover it for yourself. Continue to deeply question every step of the way. Then you will discover that the earth and sky themselves are our true body. Everything and everyone has always been awake. The earth is just as awake for the homeless person sleeping on the ground, as it is for the Buddha. There really are no gradations of being awake.
When we begin to really let go on a deeper level, there is a feeling of sinking into an infinite ocean of peace, more and more we become comfortable enough to relax into that open space, and we actually see that everything is always dissolving into the One. We begin to feel the presence of a benevolent force, that's not judging us, making it clear that there's nothing to fear. There's an aliveness there, that naturally arises when we're not protecting ourselves from it. It's always there, available for everyone, and the more we realize the wonderful freedom inherent in our being, the more we see others as realized beings, and the more we want everyone to realize it.
I've often thought, that if I can get clear enough to teach this stuff, almost anyone can, and I really believe that, if the spirit of inquiry is allowed to go deep enough. So as Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is for everyone."
Getting clear means extending this spirit of inquiry into every facet of daily life, it means to develop the courage and persistence to repeatedly drop our guard against situations that make us uncomfortable, and witness how they really affect us. This is the real meat of the spirit of inquiry. Certain aspects of our life may be very clear, like when we're doing zazen for example. Where we resist the truth, like in a relationship with a difficult co-worker, spouse, child, etc., the truth will pressure us to let go. When we begin to really wake up, those areas of our life where we're still asleep begin to stick out like a sore thumb. The truth, the ocean of peace wants to come in, wants to thoroughly penetrate, to thoroughly permeate our life. That's the pressure of the truth. Appropriate action in accordance with truth comes from this willingness to yield to this calling. At some point it just isn't worth continuing to resist, even in our deepest levels of ignorance and fear. Resisting starts to feel like, been there done that. Then the willingness to transform rather than just feel better begins to be a reality.
I want to close with a poem by Adyashanti, a very powerful young teacher from California, that seems very applicable to the courage and determination necessary to allow this spirit of inquiry to thoroughly penetrate into the deepest recesses of our being.
Enlightenment is a Gamble
Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand, you
or the Mystery that pervades you.
Time to scrape the mind's shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.
Once you've put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you've got left to gamble with
is yourself.
Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.
There is an old Zen story where the master asked his student, "Where are you going?" The student replies, "Around on pilgrimage." The teacher asks. "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?" The student replies, "I don't know." The teacher said, "Ah, not knowing is most intimate." In our culture, we put a big emphasis on how much we know. How often do we stop and ask ourselves, how do we really know what we know? Everything we think we know comes from thought, that's pretty obvious. Can anyone really say what thought is? If we try to grab onto a thought, it vanishes. When thought vanishes, everything known vanishes. Where can we find its actual substance? Thoughts appear as energy blips, then disappear, one after the other, endlessly it seems. Even the idea of ourselves as separate beings, is just a thought, fleetingly passing away, again and again. So we really can't say that any thought is true, the known is always vanishing, we really can't say what we are. We don't know.
Of course I'm not denying the usefulness of say tool box knowledge in everyday life. We need practical knowledge to live in this world, but what is its real essence? Not knowing. Not knowing in Zen practice is learning to accept and be comfortable with reality as it is, a total mystery that pervades our being. Not knowing is not just the absence of intellectual knowing. It's not the cosmic shrug, as one of my teachers is fond of saying. Not knowing is life, life is the manifestation of not knowing. It's just, here we are!
I remember about 20 years ago, when I was still with the San Francisco Zen Center, Gregory Bateson came to visit us as he was dying. He was an extremely brilliant man who developed the double bind theory of schizophrenia, and wrote many very profound books about mind and nature, exploring the archetypal patterns in various plants, animals, and humans, and how they relate to universal patterns manifest in the universe itself. My teacher Tenshin Roshi was with him one afternoon, and Gregory regained consciousness and related to him that he had just been experiencing falling into a vast, vast, ocean of consciousness, and everything he had learned in his life suddenly appeared as a mere drop, disappearing back to its source, the ocean of not knowing.
I've always remembered this, as a powerful reminder of the wonder of existence, the wonder of not knowing. The famous German philosopher, Martin Heidegger said, "the real wonder is not why things are, but THAT they are." That they are, is "Here we are!" Just this!, the Zen masters say again and again.
So much of what we consider the known, we use to suppress life, to attempt to control, to protect, to defend ourselves against life as it is. It's very scary to the ego, to look inside and realize the ego itself is just a collection of ephemeral thoughts, there's nothing there to be found, except "not knowing". Suzuki Roshi used to say, "Why do you suffer? You spend 99% of your time trying to protect your separate self, and there isn't one."
So again, all manifestation is not knowing. The spiritual path really all comes down to deeply questioning, what am I? Gradually we can begin to let go, to be ok with not knowing who we are. It really is possible to end our preoccupation w/ our thoughts and feelings. At some point we lose interest in them, and cease fighting with our mind. Then the mind can begin to discover the true meaning of surrender, and it only wants to serve the mystery that it can't comprehend.
There is another famous Zen story where the master asks the monk, "If the whole universe suddenly perished completely, what would remain that can't be emptied out?" Another way of saying this would be, if everything in the entire universe completely disappeared, what would be left that never disappears, that never changes? If you answer nothing, you're off the mark, nothing is just a word, just a thought. There's no such thing as nothing. The monk pondered deeply this question for quite some time. Then one night he entered the master's hut in the dark. He sat down and addressed the master, "What can't be emptied out, what never changes?" Then he simply lit a lamp. That which never changes can't be grasped with the mind, no one has ever seen it, yet it constantly looks out from our eyes. That which never changes manifests as the world, as duality, as differentiation, hence, the lighting of the lamp. So allow yourself to sink into this mystery, come to rest in that which is always looking out from our eyes. Just be present to whatever arises, there's no need to consciously concentrate on it, to try and see or feel something in particular. Your very being begins to open up, the solidity of the world out there begins to dissolve, and the truth of who you are begins to manifest.
As we allow this process to deepen, there's a feeling of reaching the depths of the meaning of being alive. There's no conceptual meaning to life, the meaning is the feeling of really allowing life itself to course through our veins. So many people come to the practice of Zen craving the liberated feeling of wildness, the freedom to express the deepest love of our heart to our creator, or to our source, beyond the personal and impersonal. By continual practice for quite a few years for most people, we gradually lose our fear of letting go, and a shift can happen. The shift is the feeling of aliveness shifting from the ego, to the dharma itself, or to life itself, to not knowing itself.
It is possible to have access to a deep stillness, a very alive stillness, where it's obvious that all manifestation, of feelings, thoughts, form, sensations, is that stillness, which is the source of everything. We cling to that realization at first, because it's so alive. That experience passes away like everything else. So having this access is not enough, real practice is coming out of samadhi, and gradually learning to embody that stillness in every situation in our life. This stillness in reality is not knowing, and even the greatest sage can't tell you what it is. With continual diligent practice, you will realize THAT it is, and you are That!
