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Don’t Think You Understand

Don’t Think You Understand

Last updated on: July 15, 2016 at 10:12 am by Domyo Burk

Don’t Think You Understand 2016-07-15T10:12:09-08:00 Domyo Burk

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Don’t think you understand It. On the other hand, don’t think you don’t understand It.

It? What is It, a pronoun capitalized this way? What is It, pronounced with the kind of emphasis that communicates great significance?

Alternatively It is called the Great Matter, the Divine, Prajna Paramita, Enlightenment, Emptiness, Suchness. These are ways we refer to different aspects of It.

When I write these words, what do you think to yourself?

You probably think to yourself EITHER that you don’t understand these things, “Wow, I wish I understood those things, maybe I will someday.” Or, perhaps, “I will probably never understand.”

OR when you hear these words you have a sense that you do understand these things, at least to some degree; the words conjure up for you a memory of an experience, a mind-state, an insight, or you think of images or sensations that you find comforting or inspiring.

It is difficult to say which of these – a sense that we don’t understand, or a sense that we do understand – is more detrimental to spiritual practice.

Buddhist understanding – prajna paramita, the perfection of wisdom – is completely different from ordinary understanding. It is so different that even though it is here under our noses all the time, we miss It. Even though this Understanding is free and available, we revere Shakyamuni Buddha as a once-in-a-universe amazing person because he came to It without even having a teacher who pointed it out to him.

This is the central teaching of Buddhism – that there is a kind of wisdom, a kind of insight, “which removes all suffering, and is true, not false.” (Quoting from the Heart Sutra.)

The Buddha studied suffering – old age, disease, death, loss, dissatisfactoriness – and asked whether there was any way out of it. He was not the first to ask this question by any means. Almost every religion and social movement has tried to offer people a remedy, a way out, at least a mitigation of this human experience of suffering.

What the Buddha realized was, in a sense, it’s all how you relate to it. It’s all how you see it and understand your place in it.

However, this is not about adopting some arbitrary positive outlook! (Well, you could look at things that way and suffer, but if you adopt this philosophy or view things don’t look so bad…) This is about seeing the true nature of reality.

What is it that we see? A textbook answer would be something like, “we see that we, and all beings and things, are empty of inherent, enduring self-nature.” But this description is so inadequate to convey what we end up understanding.

We could also say “we see that things-just-as-they-are, without the filter of our self-concern, are precious.”

Or we could say “we see that there is only this moment, and this moment is free from suffering.”

Intellectual understanding of these descriptions, or faithful belief in these descriptions, do not convey the release from suffering that the Buddha found. They must be personally and directly experienced for that to occur. And once they are personally and directly experienced we are forever changed, but no experience in the past conveys lasting release from suffering either.

Perhaps when you hear It – the Great Matter, Prajna Paramita, Enlightenment, Emptiness, Suchness – you recall the spacious, unself-conscious feeling you experience in the wilderness.

That’s not It.

Perhaps you think of the “zone” you get into while doing a body practice or artistic activity.

That’s not It.

Perhaps you think of how vast space is, or how we are made up mostly of space, between our tiny atomic particles.

That’s not It.

Perhaps you think of how everything changes, so you can’t really draw a boundary around who you are.

That’s not It.

Perhaps you think of how it is impossible to trace all the causes and conditions and beings that brought you the meal you eat, and how dependent you are on all these different aspects of the universe.

That’s not It.

Now, it would be good for all of us, myself included, if I left you with that message and shut up. But in the West, especially in Soto Zen, we explain things. It is the gentle way.

It is so easy to be satisfied with just an intellectual understanding. It is so easy to fool ourselves that ours is not just an intellectual understanding – after all, if it is associated with emotions, it’s not just intellectual, right? It is so easy to allow what was once a real experience to devolve into a mere memory, a mere view.

Most of us walk around with a largely intellectual understanding of It. As Dogen would say, we are “playing in the entrance way.”

This is why Zen Masters through the ages have pulled out all the stops and done all kinds of strange things to try and wake their students up from their dreams. They yanked their students’ noses, offered riddles, put slippers on their heads. What is that about? Some kind of ridiculous code? A contest to see who was least inhibited?

No.

It says Right Here, Right Now, Do You See?

In a sense it doesn’t matter what is said or done to express it; if both people can experience It, the arrows have met in mid-air. This is extremely important. There is no god in Buddhism that is going to condemn us or even be disappointed in us because we just play in the entrance way. But what a shame.

But thinking you do not understand is just as bad.

When I think like that, I am here, and understanding is over there – in that [other person’s] head, or in the past, or in the future. This can be one of the most painful beliefs. It can also be one of the biggest obstacles.

We are intimate with It every moment of every day. It is never anywhere else.

Once I was questioning whether I should be seeking so hard, feeling so much longing, when I was (supposedly) already Buddha. Gyokuko, my teacher, threw me a pillow. I caught it. She asked, “Did Buddha catch that pillow?” I can’t remember if I answered or just looked dejected, but I certainly did not have the experience of Buddha catching a pillow.

We experience the perfection of wisdom when we stop looking anywhere else.

When the Zen Master comes and challenges us, we answer her in kind. Perhaps we say, “Yes! Buddha caught the pillow!” Perhaps we throw the pillow back. Perhaps we laugh. But the challenge does not send us off in our minds to abstractions or memories, concepts, images, metaphors or teachings. We know the Buddha is nowhere else, and have dropped the self-concern that wonders how “I” relate to Buddha.

Being at home with oneself like that is an immense relief from suffering.

We must struggle to understand, and unfortunately there are no shortcuts. But what we do in that struggle is exhaust all of our dreams until finally there is no place left to go. Then we see It is something we have understood all along. We just didn’t know what kind of understanding to look for.

And a final note – having answered the Zen master’s challenge one day does not mean we will be able to do so the next. This is not an understanding that is of any use to us in the past.

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