To zen
Mon, 01 Jan 1996 Filed in:
Journal
“to zen” is to know something without
knowing it, to do something without knowing how. It is similar to
intuition, but far deeper. It engages the soul’s capacity for the
impossible: touching the sun with the eye, hearing silence,
traversing infinite distances of time and space in a single
thought. In the moment of zenning, everything is reversed: The
object is already achieved, and time marches backward to the moment
of action. Through the unity of opposites and all elements, a door
is opened to every place and time. Achievement is already a fact;
the goal, the journey and the question are a single point. The
self, an independent entity, yields its boundaries and sinks into
the reality of its object — while remaining aware. Nothingness
flirts with being and understands it. The mirror communes with the
light ray, though its feather touch admits no possession, no
indwelling even for an instant. The painter holds his brush and the
painting appears; then he begins to draw it on canvas. In this
mode, being is knowing. Your friend’s sigh is your own exhalation.
It *is* that it *is not* and then *becomes*. It transcends the
bounds of our finite reality while never becoming other than what
we are: Humility and greatness in the same instant. When you find
yourself confronted by an impossible moment, zen it. The mind
cannot, nor the body or the heart, but the soul possesses this
capacity — easily, effortlessly, if we let go the reins and allow
it. There is a mode of living which is impossible, which we cannot
realize until we abandon the possible. Then infinity is a simple
matter, even if to mortal eyes the scope of our limitations has not
changed. Humanity was meant to live in spirit. The world of the
body and its senses and memories is an animal heritage. To leave it
requires a mode of being that has nothing to do with it, while
including it intimately, completely. “We” are the mirror turned
toward the sun; while We are the light and the glory and the
radiant Truth. The mirror is not the sun, the sun is not the
mirror. Forgo the duality, that the sun may walk upon earth without
ever touching it. Then the impossibility of our possibilities can
show by what Hand of greatness humanity was fashioned.