Not Knowing
12 January 2006
Berkeley, CA
This morning I sat with an idea presented by John Tarrant, the meditation teacher up in Santa Rosa. During his talk, he said, Not knowing is a wonderful place to rest. After sitting with this thought for a while I found myself settling into not knowing in ways that I had not before. I don't know how to describe the feeling here - another experience of not knowing!
Not knowing is about mystery and surprise. In these moments sitting with not knowing, I had a similar experience as I did when I was contemplating the word station a while back. How station has such a restful quality to it. Maybe one of the way stations in my life should be called Uncertainty. What might some of the other stations be called? Where are some other places to rest?
Odd how from this perspective certainty, knowing, has a draining quality to it. Or at least some sense of depletion. When I know, I am not at rest. I am in motion, in the doing. A good thing - no less so than resting. It is just that in this moment I am aware of the heaviness, aware of how burdensome, knowing can be.
Sometimes I try so hard to know - holding on to the possibility that knowing will somehow be relieving, be soothing. Yet, how often is this the case? What if, for instance, I really knew someone, even myself, with a sense of certainty? What might follow from that? The feeling I have in this moment is that I would then experience that person as a kind of dead weight. They would feel heavy to me, and probably not much more than that. I know the small, ornamental anvil on the living room floor. I know it to be dense and heavy. There is literally not much more to it. All that is left are some inconsequential questions about how dense and how heavy. That's about it.
If I really knew another person, how would that be any different from my knowing the anvil? That person would be reduced to some attributes - the way any object is reduced. This is heavy. That thing is light. The one over there is pretty. The other thing is broken. Objectifying is a product of this reduction process. If I can reduce whomever or whatever sufficiently, I can know that object. But I can only know it as static, as inanimate, and in a way as dead.
Striving for certainty has a quality of trying to rest with that anvil around my neck. Not an easy thing to do. The antidote to this striving seems to be a posture of openness to all possibilities. Resting in uncertainty this way really does allow for the emergence of all possibilities, including the possibility of knowing.
Accepting that which is encompasses a kind of knowing that comes without the suffering attached to reducing and objectifying. If and when I can sit with what is, what is me, what is another, without trying to know, without judging and assessing, without thoughts of a make-over (a bit more of this, a little less of that - all the what-ifs and if-onlys), then I could settle into the kind of knowing that is also loving.
Love in this sense becomes a mysterious kind of resting in certainty. A certainty that comes with accepting another and a knowing the other (and myself) because I am attending to all that is showing up. Nothing more and nothing less. Loving in this way is sitting with the possibility that whatever is showing up is enough. What could be more restful than that?