This is the text of a talk I gave on June 8, 2023.

This is Case 20 in The Book of Equanimity:

 Master Jizo asked Hogen, “Where have you come from?”

“I pilgrimage aimlessly,” replied Hogen.

“What is the matter of your pilgrimage?” asked Jizo.

“I don’t know,” replied Hogen.

“Not knowing is the most intimate,” replied Jizo.

At that, Hogen experienced great enlightenment.

Jizo’s final remark in this koan, “not knowing is the most intimate,” is among the most profound and repeated lines in the Zen tradition, but I want to focus on the very last line of this koan instead.

This past Saturday (June 3rd) I gave a talk about seeking and finding meaning.  In that talk I said many of us come to practice because things seem out of joint; disintegrated.  Humpty Dumpty is cracking, or maybe already in pieces.  We’ve made meaning when all the pieces of oneself and all the pieces of the world we inhabit seem to cohere in a new way.  We’re seeking integration; a sense of wholeness.  The knowledge we seek isn’t a philosophical, theological, or scientific formulation, but the experience of knowing oneself and all else as interlaced threads of the vast robe of liberation itself.

Many koans end like the one I read a moment ago: “At that, so-and-so experienced great enlightenment.”  Reading this, we might assume the monk’s search for coherence and cohesion is over in a flash.  If this is what we expect for ourselves—that we’ll have a flash of insight that puts our heart-mind to rest once and for all—we may be disappointed.

Many Zen practitioners do have a powerful kensho experience at some point.  These experiences absolutely can, and they very often do, leave one with an abiding sense that one is not separate from it all.  Many other Zen practitioners don’t have such a singular experience, however, but instead have many less dramatic moments of non-dual insight, like a sense of the oneness of it all while watching steam dance upward from a teacup or watching the play of light streaming through a window.  Whatever our experience, the spark that brought us to practice is bursting into a flame.

But old ways of knowing and seeing, and the old habits of mind and heart that accompany them, tend to die hard.  Zen practice is a context that tests and challenges the boundaries of the ways of knowing and being we have brought to it.  It sometimes pierces, sometimes simply sidesteps our preexisting mental frames.  Chief among these mental frames is our sense of self; of who we are and how we exist. 

The moments of insight we experience as Zen practitioners are disorienting to that sense of self, with its overly rigid boundaries and its containment, command, and control projects.  Early in our practice, our self-sense may react to new insight by trying to co-opt it; to contain and control it as something “I” now “have.”  The ever-quotable Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa was fond of saying that the ego wants to be present at its own funeral.  Our insight experiences can be held in a way that’s self-referential; regarded as personal accomplishments, and so indicative of spiritual pride.

If and as we continue to practice, however, if and as we continue to nurture and fuel the flame insight experiences ignite, that rigidly bounded sense of self ultimately may be consumed by the flame and turned to ash.  Other practices, like therapy, can complement and support our practice, and vice versa (but should not be confused with it).  

Ash isn’t nothing; it isn’t mere refuse.  It mixes with the the soil that gives life.  It scatters and rides the wind in the Ten Directions.  Now we truly identify, mingle with, nourish and are nourished by all that arises.

Mature, seasoned insight is the experience of feeling centered in a universe with infinite centers.  Now we know and experience ourselves and all else as interlaced threads of the vast robe of liberation itself.  No containment necessary, or even possible.

The monk in our koan dropped his guard for a moment.  He became vulnerable; exposed.  He had been wandering around with an intense sense of purpose, but he realized he had no idea what he was looking for or even why he felt something was missing in the first place.  To his surprise, Jizo validates his not knowing; encourages him to give up the self-referential containment, command, and control project that his spiritual journey had become, and simply live into the mystery. 

This monk, like so many of us, set foot on a narrow path thickly overgrown with questions.  With this moment of initial insight, the path begins to widen, feel less vexed and more spacious.  Maybe the path eventually will disappear into a vast clearing.  Lost in it, we see nothing but the horizon in every direction.  And each blade of grass at our feet.

In-sight.  Seeing from within, not seeking a way out.  

What is this vast clearing in which we find ourselves?  Home, warm and intimate.

I think Jizo is encouraging the monk to rest his weary legs, mind, and heart.  I think the monk is on the cusp of accepting that practice is the point of practice; that his life is the point of his life.  Jizo is affirming that recognition.            

Jizo is telling the monk that he’d might as well make himself at home.