Suzuki Roshi
Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going?” Fayan said, “Around on pilgrimage.” Dizang said, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?” Fayan said, “I don’t know.” Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
From the Book of Serenity, case 20
Shinshu’s Commentary: Like Suzuki Roshi, Fayan is probably wearing a monk’s traveling gear: a broad straw hat and staff. He is on his way somewhere. But where? He said it is a pilgrimage. How can Fayan say he is going on a pilgrimage and yet not know where he is going. And to top it off, Dizang says, “Yes, you’ve got it!”
Dizang is dressed for traveling as we all are. This very skin is a pilgrim’s hat and staff. Our robes are shorten for more easily walking the path. Our lives are a journey to the sacred sites of each moment lived. How can we know the purpose of each moment? How can we know the outcome of each interaction? Yet we crave certainty in this life of uncertainty. We hid in the notion that we can anticipate and make infallible plans.
In the Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Sutra one encounters the word “disport.” A bodhisattva disports him or herself in the Dharma. We have permission to play in the field of wisdom. This is the field of our life. Our pilgrimage is the act of disporting ourselves in not knowing. Our problems arise when we try to tie things down, etch them in stone.
Usually when we make a pilgrimage, we have a predetermined route. We plot our progress from one sacred space to another. We make a circle, we complete a journey and we expect transformation of some kind. In this koan the teaching is each moment, each interaction is a pilgrimage. Each encounter is a sacred moment. Where are we going exactly? Just this moment is a complete pilgrimage.
When we don’t know, we get closer to the truth of a thing – a person. Not knowing is being curious, truly meeting our life. It is not making up stories. It is: no story, no wall, no fixed agenda. Suddenly in not knowing we are finding out something most interesting – most intimate. We meet a person. We meet the self. It is both knowing and not know. Can we get any closer?
This is the same intimacy we embody in zazen. In zazen we don’t know what will happen and we let go of what we want to happen. We explore dropping the mind of “I don’t want to feel pain” or “I want to feel transformed.” We engage or disengage into a mind of “I don’t know” and “think-not-thinking”. Let go, meet each situation and meet your life. Walk the sacred path of the pilgrim as you enter the door of your work place. “I don’t know what this interaction will bring, but I will stay and listen.”
How can we understand this? Although I don’t know, I will be curious. I will disport myself in the Dharma. I might intimately see that this life is life making life. How can I be separate from life itself? I am always just this, meeting a person, a situation or thing. Letting go. Not knowing. How intimate!
