Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Not Knowing 


Received the following question today;


Do you know if any of Suzuki Roshi's talks are about ‘not knowing mind is most intimate’ or even where he references? I’ve been on your site as well as SFZC‘s and could not find anything in reference to this.




My answer which may help the reader see how to search through all of the extant Shunryu Suzuki lectures:



"Not knowing is most intimate" is the way that koan, number 2o in
      the Book of Equanimity,  is expressed these days. I first heard it
      as "Not knowing is closest." I don't remember Suzuki Roshi talking
      about it specifically. You can easily search for the words at
      shunryusuzuki.com.



Here - I'll go there and see what I can find. At
      shunryusuzuki.com I knock on the gate and go to Inside the Gate
      where there are various options, the most prominent being





Shunryu Suzuki Lecture
            Search Form



        







That takes us to the Search Form with
      three search options. I almost always use the first. The only
      option in the search that applies here is the Keywords. First I'll
      search for the word intimate. It's used 13 times in his lectures,
      some when he's reading a text, once by a student, once as a verb,
      describing close relationship between friends, student and
      teacher, husband and wife. The closest use of it to the koan
      happens in Winter Sesshin Lecture
        No. 5, December, 1969, Verbatim Transcript
      (69-12-03)











So this kind
        of understanding will be something which you should understand.
        Someth- -- it is not something which you can understand but
        something you will be familiar with, you know. When something--
        you can feel something which you will be, you know, more
        intimate by your practice. This is bodhisattva practice.









so I'll try writing
"not knowing"







There
are two examples of that. One from questions, July, 1965, Verbatim Transcript (65-07-28-D) is a use similar to the koan.







 And big patient
is something different from to be patient with your physical or mental distress
or suffering. I think this makes sense, I think. That is small patient, or--
but big patient is to be patient for not-- for not knowing anything, or for not
being-- for not to achieve anything,







"Not know"
brings up too many examples. Anyway, Suzuki Roshi expressed the same
understanding as that koan often in various ways. I plan to go through all the
lectures again - that's overdue - and when I do, I'll try to note places in the
lectures where that sort of idea comes up. To me, it's universal, part of the
perennial philosophy, that absolute truth is not known or knowable in the way
that we normally know things. It's central to mystical Christianity. Check out
the Mystical
Theology of Pseudo Dionysius which is quite short. He makes that point
clear and one commentary in the notes therein reads







Here, being neither
oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united to the completely unknown by
an inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing. 







And then there's the
old gospel song with the line, "I've got the peace that passeth
understanding."