Not Knowing Is Most Intimate
Why meditate when the world is a hot mess?
Welcome to the Tricycle Substack, a place for Buddhist community and conversation from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Read our inaugural essay below.
By Daisy Lin
The first time I tried to meditate in a sangha, it was anything but peaceful. As I settled onto the cushion, trying to still my fidgeting body, a giant sneeze gathered force inside me, threatening to shatter the silence of the entire meditation hall. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes as I suppressed the inner convulsing, and, desperate for a distraction, I proceeded to project onto my mind’s screen the climactic end scene from the film Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 edition starring Keira Knightley.
Cut to: Elizabeth Bennet steps out into a lush open field of the English countryside in the early dawn. Off in the foggy distance, she sees a silhouette moving steadily toward her. As the sun rises and the piano concerto swells, the dashing figure reveals itself to be Mr. Darcy, his black trenchcoat billowing behind him. He approaches, and the scene culminates in the sun-drenched embrace we had been eagerly anticipating.
It was working: no sneeze! I proceeded to replay that scene over and over for the rest of the meditation period as a preventive measure.
Not the most auspicious start to my meditation journey but certainly memorable.
Nearly twenty years later, I still meditate. Somehow, that sneeze was the gateway. How did I keep meditating after that first uncomfortable sit?
It had everything to do with the fact that my life was falling apart. Unlike the fairytale ending of the film, my marriage was not drawing to a happily-ever-after. My girlhood dreams were instead unraveling in a painful, chaotic nightmare.
At that moment, I had no idea what was about to happen: the dissolution, collapse, rebuilding, and rebirth that were to follow in the subsequent years. All of my illusions of a perfect life with the person I thought I would spend the rest of my days with were coming apart. Still in denial, I was frantically trying to plug the holes, but the leakage was worsening and the dam was about to break.
In that surrender to something bigger than myself, there was the faintest flicker of relief.
In this fugue state, I visited the Los Angeles Compassionate Heart Sangha on a Sunday morning. They were chanting the Heart Sutra that day, and we bowed to the various bodhisattvas: of compassion, of great understanding, of great action. Having been raised with a Christian background, it all sounded like gibberish to me. And yet, as I knelt and put my head to the ground and felt the support of the earth beneath me, something loosened. For the first time in months, I stopped trying to hold everything together. In that surrender to something bigger than myself, there was the faintest flicker of relief.
So I kept going back.
The Gate of Not Knowing
“Not knowing is most intimate” is one of the best-known Zen koans, and it met me where I was: stripped of certainty, exposed, and undone. I had spent years constructing a life according to a plan: marriage, house, success, control. When it collapsed, the scaffolding of who I thought I was dissolved too. Only then could I begin to see who was left and what was real.
Terrifying as it was, not knowing became the doorway. When there is nowhere to hide, life grows vivid. You begin to meet reality raw, unscripted.
Not knowing ushered me through the dharma gate. I never would have walked through it and followed a friend into a sangha if I hadn’t been at my wit’s end. And I never would have been able to release, grieve, do the healing work, and reconstruct my life, a transformative process that took years and made me more free and aware than I would have been otherwise.
Here’s how the famous Zen story goes:
Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going?”
Fayan said, “Around on pilgrimage.”
Dizang said, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?”
Fayan said, “I don’t know.”
Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
Unloading the Baggage
After the divorce, I had to clear out a storage unit on Silver Lake Boulevard in Los Angeles. Everything that once filled a home was heaped there: furniture, books, dishes, and other relics of a vanished life sealed behind a padlock. After a year of rebuilding, it finally came time to face this Pandora’s box.
When I finally unsealed it, I gasped. I hadn’t noticed when I booked that third-floor “bargain” unit that the ceiling was uncovered, with just a few wires running across the top, and semiexposed to the elements. All the piles of furniture, stacks of books, housewares, and mementos were covered by a thick layer of dust and bird feathers from floor to ceiling. Flabbergasted, I broke down in tears, not knowing how I was going to move this molten mountain of baggage.
There is a choice in moments of not knowing: Will we shrink and give in to fear? Or will we turn toward what life is presenting, bravely, gently, fortified with support and tenderness from the practice?
Then I did what I’d been practicing: I kept sitting, and I kept breathing. I leaned on my family and the sangha for emotional support. Weekend after weekend, I went alone to that dimly lit unit and sorted through the rubble, covering my nose while wiping off the dust and feathers. I gave away what no longer belonged. A sangha friend took much of the art and housewares. A nonprofit moved out the boxes of books. Slowly but surely, I was getting lighter.
Three months later, I was done. FedEx carried off the final boxes to my ex. A giant weight lifted off my chest. I was free to move forward.
There is a choice in moments of not knowing: Will we shrink and give in to fear? Or will we turn toward what life is presenting, bravely, gently, fortified with support and tenderness from the practice? Will we become curious, sift through the mess, let go of our delusions, move forward, and witness what happens when we keep the space open?
Every time I have been in a period of not knowing, it has meant it was time to give birth to something new.
The Collective Unknowing
“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.”
—Timothy D. Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
We are collectively facing a time of not knowing right now. Rising inequality, ignorance, cruelty, brutality, greed, corruption, violence, climate disasters, and authoritarianism are sweeping the globe against a background of astounding technological change that threatens to upend everything we have assumed about how things work and what is true.
What I learned sitting on a cushion in my darkest hour may be the very thing the world needs now. Buddhism begins not with denial but with recognition. The first of the four noble truths flat out says it: There is suffering. And yet Thich Nhat Hanh calls the four noble truths the way of understanding and love. To acknowledge suffering is not to drown in it but to see clearly. Then we can look into its causes, stop the madness, and walk the path that frees.
Transformation always begins from the inside out.
When Stillness Becomes Action
Recently, I met my teacher, Valerie Forstman, at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center. I complained that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and everything seemed futile.
“What’s the point?” I asked.
Her voice rose with urgency. “You are alive, Daisy, and you get to practice!”
The words landed like a bell strike. Wake up. This is it. Do the work in front of you.
How can we just sit still when there is so much to do? Meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein flips the cliché: “Don’t just do something, sit there!” The truth is, we need both. Action without clarity breeds more confusion. Meditation without action is like riding a cart without a horse. Every day we try our best to do both, even when things are a hot mess, even when we feel weak, flawed, and overwhelmed. We sit, and we ask, “What can I do to help?”
Wake up. This is it. Do the work in front of you.
Why practice when the world is on fire? So that we don’t fan the flames with our fear and anxiety. So that we can respond with steadiness, grounded in the solidity of dharma. We don’t need to save the world; we just do what is within our capacity in the moment. So that we can live a life we can respect.
We practice together for those who can’t, and in that shared silence, we remember we’re not alone.
The River and the Pilgrimage
My friend Sara once sent me an inspiring message from Hopi elders:
This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you, and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word “struggle” from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
What a gift, to be here, alive this day, this hour, this second, floating together in this river. Practicing love and engagement in a divided world and meeting each moment on this pilgrimage open and unarmored: how challenging, how beautiful, how alive. Not knowing is most intimate.
Daisy Lin is an Emmy Award–winning journalist whose work has been published by NBC News, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and more. She is a longtime member of the Caretaking Council of Los Angeles Compassionate Heart Sangha and a student at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Coming up on Tricycle:
Join meditation teacher Will Johnson for an hour of guided meditation and discussion over Zoom at 11 a.m. ET on Monday, December 8 as part of the Tricycle Meditation Group. Sign up here.
Join Professor William Waldron for a discussion on Yogacara, the highly influential but often misunderstood mind-only school of Mahayana Buddhism, at 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday, December 9. Sign up here.
Sign up for Tricycle Meditation Month, our annual challenge to commit to a daily practice. This year, Korean author and teacher Haemin Sunim leads us in realizing our true nature through koans. Sign up here.
Perhaps Buddhism's pessimistic take on the world seemed unrealistic to people who grew up and became adults in the U.S. middle class bubble that lasted for some decades. There it was possible to at least pretend the world made some kind of sense. Now I think more people are experiencing the world the way it's usually been experienced and the way Buddhism describes it. The world is bewildering, full of suffering, and we have no idea what's going to happen next. In this situation it's easier to see the value of being your own refuge as well as having a sangha to support you. Suffering results in either bewilderment or search. If you're bewildered, it's time to search for the truth within yourself. Chaos is the reason we practice.
What a timely article, at the end of such a difficult year.
"and witness what happens when we keep the space open?"
This element of trust in the practice, of patience with ourselves and with how things unfold in our lives and the world is most necessary to face all challenges ahead. Thank you for this beautiful essay.