In Zen practice we talk a lot about “don’t know mind.” Even if it appears that things are as they seem, it ain’t necessarily so. So many of the conditions influencing the moment are invisible. We don’t know when or what the next second will bring. And when it doesn’t go as we expect, it’s time to remember to open our hearts, to hold steady, to take the next best step, even if we cannot see beyond it. We call this “faith mind”, awareness that reaches beyond, into what is vast as the universe and deep as the ocean, and within which all life and death unfolds.
The beauty of our practice lies in all the permission it grants us to not know. We become familiar with not knowing, intimate, in the practice of relaxing into it in zazen. When we are whacked by what was hidden and now is showing its face and turning, our dharma eye is all that we have at those moments. The eye that we develop over the course of a life of practice. We cultivate a stable mind and spacious view that grounds us in times of great difficulty.
