I gave this talk today at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit.

This is Case 3 in The Gateless Gate:

Whenever Chu-Chih (J: Gutei) was asked a question, he simply raised one finger. One day a visitor asked Chu-Chih’s attendant what his master preached. The boy raised a finger. Hearing of this, Chu-Chih cut off the boy’s finger with a knife. As the boy ran from the room, Chu-Chih called to him. When the boy turned his head Chu-Chih raised a finger. The boy was suddenly enlightened.

When Chu-Chih was about to die he said to his assembled monks, “I received this one finger Zen from T’ien-lung. I used it all my life but never used it up.”

Surgeons and those who work with them tend to be a close-knit group.  Like all humans, these people make mistakes, and, like many close-knit groups, they tend to circle the wagons when mistakes happen.

Lawyers representing patients harmed by surgical mistakes or representing loved ones after a patient had died from medical malpractice used to have a hard time getting redress.  One common malpractice scenario was leaving the little surgical sponge used to soak up blood during the procedure inside the patient’s body after she was sewed up.  The sponge would cause an infection.  Often, the patient died.

The rules of legal evidence generally require proof of what happened—of who did what when—to assign responsibility and assess penalties.  Members of surgical teams accused of malpractice would simply stay mum, refusing to respond to questions about how an obvious mistake happened.  They maintained a conspiracy of silence.

For a long time, the legal system didn’t quite know how to deal with this.  Plaintiffs’ lawyers lost cases, and victims or their families, some poor already, went uncompensated.

Then some insightful lawyer stated the obvious, arguing in court that the thing simply speaks for itself.  The judge agreed, and now we have the legal doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur, Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”

This practice-journey we’re on together is our conspiracy of silence.  But it’s a different sort of conspiracy.  We’re not trying to conceal what can’t be concealed.  We’re allowing ourselves to notice and accord with—and as—that which is constantly revealing itself.

For 25 minutes at a time, we loosen our grip on our stories and yield the floor to silence.  Stories are powerful, especially arresting ones like Chü-chih cutting off the finger of a boy who didn’t yet know this life, his life, speaks for itself.  

We know from archeological sources and other evidence that our capacity for storytelling is ancient.  Our interest in story and capacity to understand it seems to be one of the most fundamental and enduring aspects of brain function.  Brain damaged kids with IQs as low as 20 still comprehend stories, even though they comprehend little else.  Kids organize play around stories. Humans of all ages construct their sense of self in narrative terms.

We’re often completely lost in our stories, as if our personal stories or the stories told by the groups to which we belong encompass and make sense of all there is to perceive and experience.  I don’t think we can completely escape our stories, but I do think we can interrupt stories that are too narrow, too partial, too parochial, or too fixed.  We can widen the aperture of the lens through which we let the light of experience in, and through which we channel the light of the world.  We can discover ourselves situated in a story vaster than we had imagined.  

So vast that simply going mum and being it is an appropriate response.

I’m partial to mysteries.  This story we live is a mystery.  A mystery that speaks for itself.  Everywhere and always.

In our meditation practice, we raise a finger to it, and as it.  Like this.  [Raising finger.]  Shhhhhhh.