keep writing those deep questions sleep on when you wake even you'll be gone
*Stephen Berg, Trans. Ikkyu: Crow With No Mouth: 15th Century Zen Master.
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I found the Buddhist translator Red Pine responding with humor to some of the Lankavatara Sutra - a dense work, for sure - by writing in his explanatory notes, in The Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and Commentary, at one place, "This section makes my head hurt. The Buddha contrasts the ultimate reality of personal realization with the 'first causes' of other paths and thankfully moves on." In another note, he writes, "Time for tea."
Yes, there is much about the intimate Way that can give us a headache. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" "If eternity is timeless, how did anything begin that has begun?" And one from my younger days as an evangelical Christian, "If God has no beginning, how is God even God?" Or, "If God has no beginning, where did God come from?" Of course, nowhere would be an answer, but what is that? I find some deep questions to contradict themselves; deep questions do not fit in our brain. There are deep questions moving all around and within us.
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Ikkyu (Ikkyū, Japan, 1394-1481) compares fascination with "deep questions" to being asleep. Deep questions can mirror napping and help us stay asleep. Deep questions can be avoidance, a barricade to hide behind. Clinging to a deep question can preclude insight into a reply from spontaneously arising. Of course, the reply could be, "No one knows."
Do we even really want to know the answer or keep asking? Maybe we are afraid the deep question preoccupying us is not really deep, after all, not even important.
Deep questions can be a means of feeling in control, such as protecting the heart and avoiding work that exposes us to the naked unknown. We can use deep questions to try to get in control, like trying to hold air in our clenched hands. We can show off our deep questions to impress others with our intellectualism.
Now, deep questions are okay; they, too, are part of the intimate Way. Just who was that Jesus? Buddha? Is there a God? How did we get here? Is there life after death? Will I see my loved ones again? Did I exist before birth? What is love? If you get an answer to such questions, it will be a hint only. The hint may be a true hint, still only a hint, as a shadow is real but still a shadow.
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Ikkyu was a Zen Buddhist monk and later head of a Zen temple, so he studied and discussed some deep questions. His concern is the attachment to these questions. Zen teaches letting the questions drop and accepting one has no answer. This is a reason Zen is filled with koans and paradoxes. And, for Zen, answers are primarily in living, rarely in theory. For Zen, sitting in meditation (zazen) and making one's whole life zazen is more important than discussing deep questions - any questions.
Making one's whole life zazen means sitting zazen introduces us to a way of being which we take out into the worlds-of-our-lives, like Christians mean by "walking in the spirit (or, Spirit)" or "practicing the Presence of God" or "sacrament of the present moment."
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"When you wake up even you'll be gone" could be Ikkyu reminding us death is coming soon. Now, that can be a wake-up call! "Death" can be an alarm clock - Time to wake up! If death is coming soon, then we need not spend too much time with deep questions. I read Ikkyu to be speaking of waking spiritually. Then, on waking up, you see you do not exist as some separate island inside your skin. The i-sense with your name attached is not independent of others. You exist inside and outside the skin. And that is true. There is no one person to ask or find answers to any question. So, live those unanswered questions as unanswered questions.
Yet, do not criticize all those who parade their supposed religious or spiritual answers. Let them enjoy themselves. I did for years until I saw I did not see, which means to see. This means you and I do not know, and they do not know. Know you do not know. Wonderful knowing!
