Just Don’t Know

Today is my birthday. I have survived 51 orbits around the sun. I return to the same spot in our solar system each year and celebrate the accomplishment. I’m still here. I get to start my 52nd orbit now. Will I finish this one? I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say often to his students. He would tell them to retain a “don’t know” mind always. Will I wake up tomorrow? Don’t know. Why is this terrible event happening to me? Don’t know. Why is this incredibly joyous event happening to me? Don’t know. EVERYTHING…don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know.

Our mind habit is to want to KNOW things. We value knowing things and reward people who know things. We think we know many things and fail to understand why people don’t recognize how much we know. If people only knew what we knew, then they would behave or agree. Others don’t know but we know what is right. And so on.

So what’s wrong with this? Why all this anti-knowing? Let me give you my best Zen-student answer: to say that you know something is to identify with an “I” that knows. That creates a separateness between you and everything else in the universe. Separateness is an illusion. Our egos are birthed out of our thinking…out of our “knowing.” This “I’ perspective that thinks and knows things is false. It is not our true self. Our true self doesn’t strive to know things because it IS. The universe IS…it doesn’t have to “know” anything.

Another way of looking at it: Don’t-know mind is before thinking. It is before “I.” It is our mind in neutral, not moving forward or going in reverse. It is now and non-moving. It neither pushes nor resists. Whatever it encounters is ok. Not good. Not bad. It is.

So today on my 51st birthday I celebrate my completely miraculous yet ordinary birth on this round ball spinning through space. I don’t know a damn thing, and that’s ok. I am happy to be here. I hope you are, too.