Grass Hut - 25 - "Only Don't Know"

[Jika]

I've tried starting a post several times, and all that came out sounded really crazy.
I can't put it into words. In my life experience, "not knowing" marks the most threatening and the most peaceful moments.
When "sensations... are distinct, fresh, never known before." And everything I encounter "is as new and wide open as the eyes of an infant child."
And the eyes I meet are my own.
OK, crazy again.
But, the uncertainty remains, like Mama said "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Practice is helping me to learn to live with this uncertainty.

Gassho,
Danny
#sattoday

[Ed]

"Not knowing is most intimate."
Can't remember who said that, but it reminds me of the jump off the 100 foot pole, which is another metaphor for "droping body and mind."
Even as we awaken we must continue to practice, relizing that we are never fully awaken, or that we are, but need work. We don't really know why; we just let practice carry us, in complete surrender to constancy, in faith. Ironically, it becomes evident in the wisdom we do aquire, in the compassion openning in us, that our self is lost, and Self just is, always indifferent to acheiving.
All the answers appear, slowly or suddenly, we just don't care, we just practice, walk a walk only each self can walk, going no where being nobody.

Sat2day

[Jeremy]

It's not something that had occurred to me before coming to Zen, but "not knowing" and "don't know" are incredibly fertile ground

step lightly... stay free...
Jeremy
st

[BrianW]

Q-How comfortable are you in life with "not knowing" and yielding to uncertainty about how things will be or turn out? Any examples from your life?

A rather simple answer for me…. At my age I’ve found that my “thinking/planning” self has not always been so great at knowing (e.g., predicting the outcome of a course of action.) One has to put some thought into what might happen in the future, but, that being said, there is so many variables in life one is left with quite a bit of uncertainty. Thus, I’ve been giving my “thinking/planning” mind a break and trying more to just “experience” life.

Gassho,
Jisen/BrianW

Sat2Day

[Risho]

To be honest, I'm not very comfortable with this. It's something I struggle with. For example, my wife and are on vacation in New Mexico, and we flew out here from Tampa. Slowly but surely, my dread with the trip started growing until I ultimately started shutting down and stopping zazen a couple of days before leaving. This year I've missed no more than a handful of sitting, but I let my anxiety, my known expectations really throw me off kilter.

I hate loss of control; I know, I know, "what control"? But flying genuinely freaks me out, and I just shutdown literally struggling to not push away or feed the fear. So even though I wasn't sitting, I was still trying to practice with the fear. It's very real to me, even if it's irrational. But when I got on the plane, even though I was still anxious and praying that it would stay afloat, it wasn't as bad as when I was imagining all sorts of morbid situations.

That's quite often the case with life. Things are much worse in my mind than when I actually experience it. Now with other things, I live in the realm of the unknown. For example, computer programming issues, that others run from, I live for. I love a good mystery and learning knew things. But intellectuality tends to be a comfort zone.

I'm afraid of dying; I'm afraid of things that I have to put faith in. It's that loss of control, that not knowing that I sometimes find that I need for my career but sometimes I absolutely dread. But at the same time, if I drop my "known" assumptions it does get slightly easier.

Gassho,

Risho
-sattoday

[Getchi]

"Dont know" is a fertile place, it can go in either direction.

My wife is afraid of spiders, im pertrified of cockroaches. As far as im concerned she has a perfectly rational fear, and ive never heard of anyone dying from cockroach. Yet.

Why am I so scared? I dont know, but not admitting that would make elaborate explanations necessary


GAssho,
Geoff.
SatToday.