Zen and the Art of Not Knowing God by Stephen H. ShortPT2
During this time, my mind was confronted with questions about the Buddhist rituals we routinely took part in. What is the effect of prostrating oneself before a religious idol? In our chanting, why do we call out to Buddhist "deities" and ask them to influence us? For example: "...May the future Buddha Maitreya be present and serve as our acharya, our instructor; may all the Tathagatas of the ten directions be present and serve as our companions in our study; and may Shakra, Indra, and all the deities be present and serve to protect and adorn our practice." And why, at the start of each practice session, would we strike bells, light incense, and place fresh flowers and a water bowl on the altar -- all actions traditionally intended to attract "spirits"? Were these beings real? If so, what power did they have, and what were we authorizing them to do?
One morning, a young Korean student, called Student Park, rushed over to me drained of color and nervously asked if we could talk. He told me that the previous night he dreamed that a "ghost" floated out of the ground behind the center's garage, opened the back door, and drifted into his room. At that moment, he woke to find a gauzy figure violently strangling him. He screamed, and it vanished before his eyes. Upon investigation, we discovered that the back door had been mysteriously unlocked, and that our building had once been a school of chiropractic. The school, we learned, buried body parts used for dissection behind the garage.
The Zen Master reassured the terrified Student Park: "Only go straight -- don't know -- then demons are no problem! Many years ago in Korea, I was on a 100-day retreat alone in the mountains. At night, horrible dragons and monsters would appear and try to frighten me. But I only kept chanting -- I only kept my 'don't know' mind. Soon they stopped coming, and instead, Kwan Seum Bosal [a Buddhist deity] came and comforted me."
Again, he seemed to be proposing that suffering can be transcended by taking refuge in the "don't know" mind. But he also seemed to be acknowledging a real world of contending spiritual forces, one seeking to harm us and the other to help us. If there are "good" and "bad" spirits, I asked myself, what are we doing when we relax our wills, root out our discrimination, and let go of conceptual thinking? We're trusting that the empty mind is an impenetrable refuge, or, if it's not, that only beneficent spirits can have access to it.
At cynical moments, I even questioned whether there were beneficent spirits. In the Master's story, both the demons and Kwan Seum Bosal had the same effect on him -- to drive him deeper into his "don't know" mind. In the case of the demons, it was to find escape; the comforting Kwan Seum Bosal, on the other hand, seemed to reward his perseverance and encourage him onward. Could they actually be in league, both seeking to preserve an open door and an empty vessel?
During my stay at the Zen center I would frequently awaken at night and sense something standing over my bed, watching me. This being elicited an instinctual terror -- a chilling, nameless dread. It was a true moment of no thinking or "don't know," yet I felt no transcendence. Instead, there arose in me a clear, unthinking cry for someone to protect me.
Despite my fears and doubts, the "don't know" mind represented my only present hope for peace and protection. Perhaps I wasn't committed enough. I decided to plunge ahead and take the vows of a Zen priest.
While I was in San Francisco for the initiation ceremony, I met "the Snake Woman." This young lady loved serpents and kept a 10-foot python in her room at the local branch center. She would sit with it wrapped around her shoulders during group meditation. The other students, apparently unable to keep "don't know" minds, finally complained to the Zen Master.
He was furious, not because there was a snake in the meditation hall, but because of all the bad karma the Snake Woman was producing for herself. Karma is the effect of previous causes. If I rest my hand on a hot plate, I get burned; the burn is the consequence of my decision to place my hand on that location -- it is my karma. Buddhists believe that karma will determine conditions in the next life as well as the present one. The Master summoned the Snake Woman and told her to get rid of her pet. If she didn't, in future lives she would have to suffer the same gruesome death as every single mouse she had fed the snake.
"What a system!", I thought. I know there are consequences to our actions, but who determines what they are in a case like this? After all, the Snake Woman was only feeding her hungry pet as she would the starving man in the Master's example of the "don't know" mind. If this is karma, I thought, I'll never be free of it. I could meditate for a thousand years (meditation, we were told, "burns off" karma), and still be its slave for swatting a mosquito.
I confronted the Master: "Does Zen free you from your karma or not?"
"Oh, no," he laughed. "I am still pulled around by my previous karma. The Buddha himself died from eating a piece of rancid pork. That was his karma."
Even the Buddha was in chains to karma! The freedom we were promised meant only that the chains somehow didn't matter; once we attained enlightenment (or the "don't know" mind) we would somehow experientially transcend the self and its attendant karma. Ironically, it was our individual karma that had supposedly brought us to the only means of transcending it: Zen practice. "Don't lose this opportunity," the Zen Master said. "Finding Zen is the result of very auspicious and very rare karma." Nonetheless, it bothered me that we were all at the mercy of a cosmic law that apparently took no account of motives (the Snake Woman had no malicious intent in feeding her pet), and that seemed to perpetuate suffering (if she had to die like every mouse she fed her snake, then presumably so must those who would feed her to their pets, and those who would feed them, etc.).
On the one hand, I yearned for the freedom promised by enlightenment. I worried that my karma would catch up with me before I escaped it. On the other hand, I shrank from the surrender of self which enlightenment required. "Finishing Zen is like stepping off a thousand foot cliff," the Master would say. I recoiled as I peered over the edge into the yawning abyss of "don't know." I wondered if there were someone -- or some force -- somewhere with an alternative solution; one who could both take away my karma and preserve my life. Perhaps there was some intelligence behind karma, one capable of conceiving and administering such a complex system. Could I appeal to this karmic controller directly? But would I, when I was always striving to keep an empty mind that, by definition, held no idea of doing so? I finally resolved to go the way of Zen and let go of all this thinking.
We assembled for the priests' initiation ceremony. One priest placed a small coil of incense on my arm, and another lit it. Watching the flame move down my skin, I found myself resisting this symbolic burning of my karma, of my self. For, as hard as I tried, I couldn't get rid of the idea that I was burning up something I would need if I was to ever find the truth.
Back in Los Angeles, the Zen Master urged us on. "You must believe in yourself -- one hundred percent!" Of course, he was referring to the true self, not the thinking self. The harder I practiced, though, the more my confidence eroded. I appeared strong on the outside: impassive, unemotional, rock-like. But inside, I was wracked with the many questions I had either suppressed or ignored: Will I ever attain "don't know"? Can I trust it if I do? Or will it then be too late to matter? I knew further that I was not truly self-reliant, for I depended on the daily practice. It was the only means by which I could escape suffering and death. If I ever stopped, there was no hope for me.
I also realized with a start one day that after years of Zen training, I was the same old me inside. A middle-aged female student had decided to take on the role of Zen Center mom. She did the laundry and shopping and began picking up after us, complaining about our leaving the shoe rack a mess. For some time, she had been nagging me to paint the Master's room. When she reminded me again one day, something snapped and I burst forth in a torrent of rage, detailing the history of her officious meddling in my life.
Back in my room, I sheepishly faced the fact that the years of hard training had not touched the tendencies within me that were a source of shame. Nor had they touched those of the other students: shortly thereafter, I saw a Zen monk with shaven head throw this same woman against a wall and threaten her.
As my inner confidence continued to crumble (in spite of my efforts to avoid it by not thinking), a strange thing happened. I began praying. I told myself that perhaps it would help me as a songwriter if I prayed for success. (Of course, I also told myself that it didn't really matter one way or another -- I wasn't attached to success.) To whom or what was I praying? I don't think I had any idea. I just needed to reach out. I needed help.
One night another Zen student burst into my room without knocking and discovered me on my knees. I had been caught. I leapt up, red-faced. Both he and I knew that what I was doing challenged Zen to its roots: by praying, I was expressing a desire for something from an external source about which I held hopes and beliefs. He turned away and said nothing, probably in his own effort to hold no opinions.
As I continued praying, the Object to which I prayed -- at first so nebulous -- began to take on form over time. It became a soft wind blowing through the chambers of my heart, calling me.
I began to remember things I had learned earlier about the Christian God, and how His Son was said to control everything. I could control nothing. During this time, I seemed to be drawn to books and TV shows that talked about how Christ could "save" you. I knew I couldn't save myself.
Battle lines formed inside me. Thirteen years of Zen study and practice told me to hold on: "Don't panic, your breakthrough to freedom is just around the corner. Wait for your great experience and all your doubts and thinking will be as mist. The death of your self, which you fear, is the beginning of life."
"The most important thing," the Master shouted, "is don't quit the journey." I asked him about God. "GOD?!" he exclaimed. "Show me God." I couldn't answer. "To understand God, you must first understand your true self. Your true self is before thinking. Attain your true self and you will understand God." Attain a "don't know" mind, he insisted, and you'll know God. But the slightly more influential voice blowing through my heart murmured, "Attain a 'don't know' mind, and you'll never know God."
The Zen Master took a Bible from his bookshelf. "The Christian Bible says, 'I am the way and the truth and the life.' 'I' is your true self, your 'don't know' mind. Your true self, the self that is before thinking, is the way and the truth and the life."
I obtained a Bible so I could look up John 14:6-7 for myself. I saw that it was Jesus Christ, referring to Himself, who said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." And Jesus went on to say, "If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well."
He was talking about knowing! The way to know this God is to know Jesus Christ, not to "don't know." Could this God, I pondered, be the One who controlled cause and effect, and who could protect me from what I feared?
I decided to return to the East coast, but resisted the impulse to move into my Master's Zen center there. Instead, I tried to continue Zen practice on my own. When the Master visited, I would go see him, but his words didn't hold me as before. I retreated into the Maine woods one summer in an attempt to rekindle my fire for enlightenment. But only my will remained surrendered to that goal. My heart was listening to another voice.
As Zen's grip on me loosened, I became attracted to the occult. In one last attempt to attain spiritual truth through my own efforts, I began studying the hidden or "mystery" teachings and sought to develop my psychic powers. But through it all, there was always this Jesus. At a spiritualist colony, I found myself searching its library for references to Christ and occultic interpretations of His life. One day on television I saw an ex-pimp and his prostitute tell how they had left their old life, gotten married, and now lived to serve Jesus. Something, I marvelled, had swung their lives around 180 degrees, while I couldn't move mine one degree.
I also developed an interest in the various occultic claims about apocalyptic or end times, and thought it would be interesting to compare them with fundamentalist Christian interpretation. I found a book from that perspective, and in it I saw explained for the first time the clear differences between the claims of Christianity and other religions. I now had to accept that either Christianity was wrong and some or all of the others right, or only Christianity was right and therefore all the others wrong.
Simultaneously, I began to discern two movements in my life. One was a sense of sinking into an unfathomable darkness, impelled by hopelessness from Zen's failure to meet my needs and the inability of the occult to satisfy. The other movement was a feeling of being pulled uptoward some promising light. This motion was fueled by hope.
I also perceived that I was drawing near to a crossroad, some point of resolution. I sensed that I would soon have to make a choice and that once made, there would probably be no return. I could continue down with myself, or up with Jesus. One had proved empty, but was familiar. The other offered hope, but was unknown.
I was plagued with the fear of being let down again. I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with another disappointment, and my only remaining choice would be death if Jesus also proved false. But the alternative was certain hopelessness. I had to move in the direction of hope.
After years of trying to develop a "don't know" mind, I now wondered how you get to knowsomeone. I figured you first have to meet him. So one day, I decided to take a chance and call out to Jesus, wherever He was, and ask Him to meet me so that I might come to know Him. I asked Him to save me, for I needed help and was very afraid.
In response to my plea, I was hoping for some transcending insight or blinding manifestation. But that was what Zen and the occult had promised. Instead, I went to bed that night with a calm sense that everything was all right now. Sometime in the middle of the night, I was awakened and heard the words spoken in my mind, "You will know Me by faith." But I had no idea what "faith" was; my entire previous spiritual search had relied upon tangible personal experience. Perhaps a part of this "faith" was the gentle assurance I now felt, that I could count on the promises of this God to whom I had called.
It was the beginning of a relationship. To know someone, you need to communicate with him and be able to think clearly about him. You must have a self that relates to another self. Everything Zen had urged me to destroy was necessary in order to know God.
Though he seeks to eliminate the self, the Zen student has, paradoxically, only himself to rely on. By retaining my self as a new child of God, I could entrust it to Him, the One who made me. Before, I appeared strong on the outside, but was full of doubt on the inside. Now I felt calm and secure on the inside, which became a source of strength for facing the insecurities of life I encountered on the outside.
Knowing the value of what I had found, I was anxious to share it with the Zen Master. I learned that he was soon to give a public talk at his Boston branch center and decided to take advantage of this opportunity to see him. As I filed into the meditation hall with the other students, I was consumed with fear -- remembering the power he once held over me. But I was no longer alone. I asked the One who was with me, whom I now knew, to help me stand up for Him.
After the Zen Master gave a brief talk, someone asked him a question about "stillness" of mind. "You know," he began, "the Christian Bible says, 'Be still and know that I am God.' 'I' is your 'don't know' mind. Your 'don't know' mind and God are not different. Only in complete stillness will you find God. Only if you let go of all ideas."
I raised my hand and spoke up loudly: "Honorable Zen Master, that is not what the Bible says. In that verse, God is saying He stands alone!"
"You don't understand God," he said. "Christians say God is everywhere."
I knew exactly where he was leading. He would then say, "If God is everywhere, then He is the same as you."
What sprang from my mouth then, I don't believe originated from me. Before he could finish, I asked: "Are you God?"
The room became very quiet and the Master hesitated for several long seconds. Finally he replied, "No. I am Buddha."
He ignored me thereafter and went on talking about God, but I believe the real God had intervened and made His point: He stands alone. Even the Zen Master could not bring himself to say, "I am God."
But the Master persisted. "Near one of our temples there is a sign that says, 'You need God.' But this sign is a big mistake. To 100 percent believe in God you must have no ideas, no opinions, no mind at all. If you 100 percent believe in God, then 'don't know' mind or 'love' mind appears. The Christian Bible says, 'God is love.' So, God needs our 'love' minds. The correct sign should read: 'God needs you.'"
In those last moments with him, I was filled with sadness, for I knew how much this poor man -- as I had -- really needed God. How alone he seemed then; how fragile and vulnerable in his solitary self-reliance.
Out of this concern over his own great need I wrote the Zen Master one last letter, hoping that somehow, something I said might make a difference. I concluded with the following thoughts:
Zen teaching denies people access to the living God. You say to "always keep a 'don't know' mind." But, a "don't know" mind is impossible. We always keep some idea, such as the idea that a "don't know" mind is desirable. And, having a "don't know" mind doesn't stop us from sometimes doing wrong things that hurt other people....
...By keeping a "don't know" mind, we are denying that there's any separate Being beyond our "don't know" minds. Hence, we don't bother to call out to Him. We don't even think that He's there to call out to.
Honorable Zen Master, you always say, "Don't make opposites." As a result, I believe you're trapped in "don't know." You need to make one big opposite: God and you.
Call out to Him. See why He sent His Son to earth. He'll tell you in His own words in His Bible.
I probably haven't explained this very well. But I'd be glad to talk with you about it further -- anytime.
I forgive you for teaching me "don't know," and pray that you someday teach "know God."
About the Author
Stephen H. Short is a writer of popular music living in Brookline, Massachusetts. He attends Park Street Church in Boston. |
