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We use I I I ... Who is this I everyone self-refers by? Who is asking? You go to sleep, and I vanishes? You wake up, and I arises, like the pushing of a light switch or switching to a new program on the self-computer. Who or what was present the moment before I arose? Present during the hours of sleep? Can you find the I? If so, please show it to someone. Say, "Hey! Look at my I. What do you think about it?" In return, you will probably get a look that says, "You're being weird." So, maybe we are acting weird all the time. And, maybe, that is okay.
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The semi-legendary Bodhidharma (ca. 5th-6th centuries) is said to have brought Zen from India to China. An interesting story tells of his relationship to this I. In an interview with Emperor Wu, on arrival in China, the emperor asked him, "So, who are you?" Bodhidharma replied, "I don't know." Sometimes, the tradition reads, "Don't know." James Ishmael Ford, in The Intimate Way of Zen, concludes the best rendering might be, "No knowing." Bodhidharma is inviting us into a more profound knowing, one not framed by society, as those around us early began communicating in varied ways, "You are this-and-not-that." But what if you are neither-this-nor-that?
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Stonehouse (i.e.,Shiwu; Chinese Chan [Zen] monk, teacher, poet, recluse; b. 1272) -
Now that I’m old nothing disturbs me
I’m asleep on my cot before the sun sets
dreaming and wondering who I am
until the new moon lights the plum blossoms
*Stonehouse; Red Pine, Trans. The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse.
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The aged, white-haired Stonehouse has yet to find with certainty who he is. He does not know, and after being a Zen monk, abbot, and recluse teacher in the mountains. He wonders what many much younger people, often in their teenage years, ask - "Who am I?"
The dreaming and the question reflect a question he has lived with for many years. Possibly, when younger, he thought he knew who he was. Not now. Perhaps he wonders, while the adolescent does not wonder when asking the question. To wonder can add a whole different savor to a question.
Allan Watts writes, in Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion, "Whether you take some sort of ineffable mystical experience at one extreme, or an ordinary rusty nail at the other, nothing is really describable." True. Yet, not only can the recluse not describe the I, he does not know what it is so he can try to describe it. He simply has no idea what that I is in the first place.
* * *
The space in which the question arises and moves about differs from that of the confused, acutely self-conscious, hormone-driven adolescent. The question for Stonehouse and other well-seasoned practitioners of the Way presents itself as the fruition of many years of living the Way. The earlier adolescent question is, at best, a faint shadow of this seminal inquiry, this wondering. And many adults think they know who they are, and they may as a personality, but that is it.
The adolescent finds themselves through others mirroring back a self to them. Not so with the Stonehouses of this world. The answer prior has been vanquished through the practice, and often, the exhaustion of the prior answer may have been a factor in assuming or renewing a spiritual path. Simply, "I thought I knew who I am. But it does not feel true to who I really am."
Stonehouse is not panting for an answer. He is being somewhat, it seems to me, playful. His wondering is a wondering, not an intellectual inquiry that must reach a destination. There is no destination, only the wondering. He knows there is no definitive answer to the question. His many decades of fidelity to the Way have led him to this contented, playful wondering. He has no idea, not even a Buddhist idea, of who he is. He has Buddhist ideas, but not a Buddhist idea that can frame a reply to end the question. Buddhism and life have led him beyond thinking Buddhism can give the answer - that any tradition can.
* * *
So, what do we do when we are there with Stonehouse? We can wonder. We can relax playfully with the question, the not-knowing. We can enjoy the question, know that we are absolutely unspeakable, and know that is where the Way has led us. We may even grow to the point of the question dropping altogether.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024
