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Being Peace
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A follower asked the Sage, "How can I really get to know others? Is there a secret, for you seem to have a way of knowing everyone, even persons you meet a first time? You seem never to meet a stranger." Said the Sage, "All real knowing is meeting. When you meet anything, knowing is present. All else is just sharing physical proximity for a time. You can share a space with someone for a lifetime and never know them. Meeting is timeless, and it lingers after your ways part. It can linger into eternity. Real meeting never ends, even as it never began. It arises as a gift, for it already is. Simply open your heart, and it will show itself."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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We never really know anything as something separate from knowing itself. To know arises in the moment of the act of knowing. It appears as something given. To know itself is an act with no separation; separation between knower, as subject, and the known, as object, arises only as perception after knowing has occurred. When I say, "I know him," it means, "Knowing him is knowing - no division." So, I cannot divide knowing another from knowing myself in the same act of knowing. Of course, this has nothing to do with facts about someone, such as, name, race, birthplace, occupation, ...
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We use I over and over. But do we ever ask, "Who is it?" or "What is that I?" Or, "What is this I that keeps talking about I? Is this one I or two? And people talk of finding themselves. Who is it seeking what or whom? Did someone or something get lost? Since we I so much, it seems wise to consider what all this I talk is about? In fact, it seems wise to consider what other things we talk about but never consider, "What is this I think I know without really considering it may be so much more than I think it is?" So, the question, "What is I?" can be a door to knowing anything else, too. In fact, in knowing I, we may know all else whom and what we meet in this life. Is that possible?
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Gustav Ericsson, from Sweden and a Christian priest and Zen teacher, in his My Christian Journey with Zen, shares a humorous incident with his teacher, Gudo Nishijima (1919-2014).
I once asked Nishijima the age-old existential question that I was invited to look into at Kopan monastery in Nepal: "Who am I?" He answered, "I think it's impossible to know. I'm something ineffable." Then he laughed, knocked gently on his head, and said, "When I want to know who I am, I knock like this on my head. It's a little painful. So, I am."
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The knock on the head connotes getting out of the head. Nishijima knew we cannot think ourselves into knowing who or what we are - which is what I is. This I is ineffable. Yet, we can know it, as long as we know it as ineffable, even as we know God, as long as we know God as unknowable - which is to say, too, ineffable.
This approach is not anti-intellectual. Instead, our usual logic is the surface of a vast capacity to know. We engage this surface thought and relax it after it takes us as far as possible.
For example, people speak of love as though we all know what it is. I can know what love is. But I cannot understand what love is. That is, love is something I can think about and talk around but never know. If love is a dot, thought cannot place me on the dot, only keep me moving around it. So, how do I come to know love? Love shows itself. When I know love, I can say, "I have no idea what love is." Thought cannot get on the dot. The taste of love is known only by the heart. Yet, the moment we begin saying what love is, we are in the mind, off the dot and around it.
This logic is true to all of life. To know anything is to invite its mystery into ourselves. Yet, mystery is not merely some vague, sentimental, new age-like thing, nor is it relegated solely to religion. We are awash in mystery. Yet, we tame the mystery because we think we know what meets us in life, all around us and within us. Yet, like the hit on the head, we can know through direct encounters with Life.
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When opening the heart to anything, inviting it into yourself, you know it. You do not know merely about it. You know it. So, meditation leads us to sit and drop our remarking on what is happening, assuming we know what is. We take a break from thinking about it and ourselves, and truth shows itself in its naked, powerful, and oft awe-inspiring beauty. We shift from thought about to wonder in the presence of.
This direct encounter can be powerful. We are used to diluting experience with commentary in our head or through talking, often more about hearing ourselves than saying anything that needs to be spoken. The mouth is our means of escaping intimacy with Life.
So, we practice sitting with the powerful beauty of Life without seeking escape. When we escape, we return. We keep returning. Over time, we become more and more habituated to heaven, nirvana, the pure land - here, right where we are. Then, we have real insight into Jesus' teaching, "The reign of God is within-and-among you." We are no longer waiting for some cataclysmic ending to history or purging of karma to get there. There is no where to get to, to wait for, once we see.
This knowing is the knowing of the heart, and the heart can know without our knowing. In fact, the heart already knows. We just need to get out of the head. "Knock, knock?" "Who's there?" "No one." Why? You have descended into the heart... which is to say, who you are.
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In silent retreat, a few days ago, words from a song by Michael W. Smith, which I used to sing, arose, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart. I want to see You. I want to see You" ("Worship," 2011). Yes, may we get out of the head and see what the heart sees. If we do, we will see we know little, so we know so much more than we ever dreamed possible.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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