Wisdom of the Unknown
Not knowing is most intimate.
Zen master Jizō
What is known is only relative to our position, to our experience. We think we know the colour of something, yet someone else sees it slightly differently. We think we know the speed of something, yet from a distant nebula, that speed is something else. We think we know the view of the great Milky Way, yet we only look from one tiny perspective.
We assume we know something, yet behind that thing, there is not much of anything. Thus, the wise embrace the Great Unknown, the “I don’t know.” Embracing the unknown goes beyond conception, expectation, and elaboration, beyond expansion and contraction, beyond preferences and ideas of right and wrong. When we know something, we reduce it to a little box, a theory, an idea that makes us feel comfortable. We forsake the mystery for a false sense of security. However, when we don’t know, we remove the box, the walls, and the limits. It becomes illimitable, free from concepts, and free from our tendency toward complacency—our laziness that tries to place the numinous in a box.
When we say, "I know something" we reduce that thing to a concept in our mind. The conceptualization of an experience in the mind reduces it to a mere memory, syntax, a simple stroke on the canvas to symbolise the abstract. This type of knowledge needs walls, boundaries to fit into our understanding. Wisdom, however, is like a leaf that falls through the space of truth, like music moved by the hand of the mystic. Truth is a whole different ball game that neither fits inside nor cares for our concepts.
Do you remember that ball game? The one without end? The game where the rules change with every play, and the field stretches infinitely in all directions? It is the game of life, of hiding and seeking; of knowing and not knowing, where every question leads to more mystery and each answer dissolves into new possibilities. In this game, we are players and spectators, dancers and the dance, the field and the ball.
Come close to what the ancient sages meant when they called the world an illusion. It is as simple as believing that we know something. When you give up that belief, what happens? The world is vast, mysterious, and full of ineffable grace. Your sense of self-importance is humbled and diminished to an astounded awe at everything that moves. No moment is the same, no path is taken for granted, no comfort is good enough to sink into and miss the opportunity to meet the Great Mystery in the ever-new here and now.
When we open to the innocence of not knowing we, in turn, find humility, surrender, and trust. Humility, surrender, and trust are important. It is said that if one does not tremble before the face of God, then they have not seen it. It is holy awe, it is divine rapture. The mystic’s sight is forever changed by the seeing of that which extends beyond the bones, beyond the clothes, and beyond the materiality of things.
These experiences serve to humble us. We transcend the individual identity to find unity and infinity. This is how to understand what the Christians mean when they say that to enter the temple of eternity one must become one. To do this, you need humility. You also need the ability to surrender. Pure surrender allows perfect trust. Perfect trust is a pure surrender. These two go hand in hand, or like the left and right wing of the bird of peace. You cannot practise one without the other.
So embrace the I don’t know.
What is left over?
It is a sense of knowing.
Knowing is not knowledge.
We can say we don’t know and find a knowing underneath. It is a knowing that does not know an object but knows itself. It rests in itself. It is a knowing that is free of knowledge. When you let go of all you know, there it is––the essential being. That is the presence of awareness. You only really touch it when you empty the cup.
Know that you know nothing, that you could have it all entirely and completely upside-down.
