{"id":3774,"date":"2011-09-16T13:46:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T17:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yang-sheng.com\/?p=3774"},"modified":"2012-01-01T18:56:06","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T23:56:06","slug":"echoes-of-emptiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yang-sheng.com\/?p=3774","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of Emptiness (\u865a\u4e4b\u97ff)-Unknowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unknowing<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

by \u00a9 Jacob Newell (Daoshi Gu Shen Yu)
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When we are born, nature gives us the wonderful gift of unknowing.\u00a0 But human beings tend to overlook the value of this gift and treat it as an affliction.\u00a0 And so we try every which way to avoid it or transform it.\u00a0 Yet no matter how much knowledge we accumulate, our basic unknowing always remains.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The fact that we don\u2019t know everything is something that I suppose we all need to come to terms with somehow.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got options.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take the question of life and death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ever since I was four years old I was intrigued by the fact that we don\u2019t know where we come from before we were born and where we go when we die.\u00a0 It seems to me that we are all dealing with this reality in one way or another.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps many people accept that we cannot know the answer to this question, and so they set aside their curiosity and move on with life.\u00a0 These people often self-identify as \u201cagnostic\u201d, meaning without knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

But others of us are driven by a curiosity to find an answer to this question \u2013 seeking \u201cgnosis\u201d.\u00a0 I have always been one of these \u201cseeker\u201d types, and since I was a child I have approached this quest in a variety of ways.\u00a0 I can sum them up as: faith, philosophy, and enlightenment…and then there\u2019s Laozi.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faith<\/span>: Having been raised Catholic, I was taught that unknowing is not a problem so long as we live a moral life and accept Jesus as our savior.\u00a0 Then all will be revealed when we are granted a glorious everlasting life.\u00a0 We\u2019ll go to heaven and meet God, Jesus, and all of our friends and family who also were moral believers.\u00a0 While this path of faith (or other similar paths) seems to satisfy many people, it didn\u2019t work for me because I felt the people who were preaching it didn\u2019t really \u201cknow\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Philosophy<\/span>: And so I started actively questioning, outside the realm of religious faith, ruminating on my own and studying the great philosophers and spiritual teachers, picking apart their teachings and looking for gems of truth.\u00a0 This is also the path of science.\u00a0 While deeply engaging, this path too was ultimately unable to pacify my discomfort with unknowing; it only drove me crazy, going round and round, raising more questions than answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enlightenment:<\/span> And so I turned to Zen, with the hope that if I practiced hard enough I would eventually come to experience a grand enlightenment in which all mystery is revealed.\u00a0 Ahh, at last I had found the way to direct experience \u2013 true gnosis.\u00a0 But then Zen Master Seung Sahn told me: \u201cwanting enlightenment is a big mistake.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What the heck?<\/span><\/p>\n

Laozi<\/span>: There\u2019s another way we can approach our unknowing, other than turning away from it, pacifying it with faith, attacking it with reason, or seeking to cure it with enlightenment: we can just let it be what it is, look into it, be with it, come to know it and appreciate it.\u00a0 Zen Master Seung Sahn called this \u201cdon\u2019t-know mind.\u201d\u00a0 This of course is the mind of Laozi.<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowing not-knowing: value!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Not knowing knowing: sickness!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

(Laozi Ch. 71)<\/span><\/p>\n

In scholarship, daily increase<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

In Dao, daily decrease<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

Decrease and decrease until wuwei<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

(Laozi, Ch. 48)<\/span><\/p>\n

Laozi is inviting us to appreciate this unknowing in its bare reality – not supporting it with faith, not attacking it with philosophy, and not betraying it with the aspiration of enlightenment.\u00a0 This is the gnosis of agnosis, \u201cknowing not knowing.\u201d \u00a0Herein lies indescribable satisfaction; herein lies our greatest treasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[Jacob Newell<\/span><\/strong> (Daoshi Gu Shen Yu) is an ordained Daoist priest and founder of Old Oak School of Dao.\u00a0 He practices and teaches Taijiquan and Daoist cultivation in Sonoma County, California.\u00a0 His book of poetry, These Daoist Bones, is available from his website, www.oldoakdao.org.]<\/span><\/address>\n

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