She asked, "I don't understand what you teach. I try. What can I do to understand?" The Sage said, "Stop trying to understand. Understanding doesn't need your help, it needs you to get out of its way." "But," she said, "how will I understand?" "That asking me about understanding doesn't need to understand. Realizing this, there will be understanding."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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Ursula Jarand, a Zen teacher, shares that after going to Japan to practice with Morinaga Roshi, she was aware of a gap between what he was saying and what she was hearing.
Morinaga Roshi often repeated sono mama, which can be rendered "as it is" or "this is it." Jarand's inner response was, "That might be so, but I am not there yet. I don't feel enlightened."
Jarand says a transition occurred in her hearing. After many years, she heard the message not through the "I" but simply "as it is."
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The key to insight is simply listening, not the "I" listening. We could call this heart listening. When does this happen? When ripeness for it to happen happens. Then, spontaneous listening and understanding arise together as one action.
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Insight is simple, direct, and plain. Wisdom has no ornamentation. We do not think ourselves to this insight. We think until thinking drops due to the inability to understand. Then, insight arises, communicating itself.
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In pure listening, there is no one present to hear. There is only the listening.
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We see what we sought to understand was just this. What is this just this? Say it, and you step from it. Silence, and you know it.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*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.
*Story from Ursula Jarand. Susan Moon. The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. "Miazong's Disappointment": p. 286ff.
