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A Few Ways to Get Over Yourself

This is a Zen story most peo­ple know:

Now, on the sur­face, this is a sim­ple story. The scholar thinks he knows some­thing, and is there­fore unteach­able. Yet, this is entirely too sim­ple an explanation.

I saw this story enacted on our last trip to the Buf­falo Zen Cen­ter. There were a cou­ple of guys there, in their 20s, who indi­cated that they’d stud­ied Zen and Bud­dhism for a while and had not been able to find peace and a calm cen­ter. They thought that some zazen (sit­ting med­i­ta­tion) might help.

They then spent bet­ter than an hour telling every­one all the things they’d done in Japan, Korea, etc., about all they’d stud­ied, about all they knew.

Except they started by say­ing that noth­ing they knew had actu­ally worked!

I see this in ther­apy all the time—people come in and tell me what’s wrong, what isn’t work­ing, what isn’t hap­pen­ing in their rela­tion­ship, and then they blame their part­ner! When that doesn’t fly, they try to per­suade me to teach them how to make their part­ner behave.

The thought that they just might be clue­less eludes them.

My job is never to per­suade some­one that I am right and they are wrong. My job is to help them to notice how full of them­selves, and how full of their arro­gant assump­tions, they are.

My job, if you will, is to hand them a pitch­fork and point them to their inter­nal manure pile.

In Bud­dhism in gen­eral and in Zen in par­tic­u­lar, there is great empha­sis on “empti­ness.†The Zen teacher in the above story is not sug­gest­ing that the scholar empty him­self of his own judg­ments, under­stand­ings and thoughts— so that the Zen teacher can fill him up with his. That would be silly.

Most think this way, though. Peo­ple end­lessly seek the right answer, the cor­rect answer, the final answer. It’s as if they think that one size fits all. West­ern think­ing and edu­ca­tion pro­motes this idea.

Uncer­tainty, for most, is uncomfortable.

Our prob­lem is exactly the one faced by the scholar. He knew a lot. He had filled his head with learn­ing. So, in keep­ing with what he knew, he showed up on the Zen teacher’s doorstep, look­ing both to show off, and to cram in more learn­ing. His learn­ing had got­ten him nowhere in terms of his per­sonal life sat­is­fac­tion and focus, so he decided to do more of what had never worked.

Now, this is not a con­dem­na­tion of learn­ing. I’ve got a cou­ple of Mas­ters Degrees myself, and I con­sider myself to be pretty smart. What I do know is that all of my intel­li­gence has never helped me under­stand myself, or oth­ers. What it has done is given me the abil­ity to argue, fight, and try to prove oth­ers wrong.

A load of intel­li­gence is a dan­ger­ous thing.

Emp­ty­ing one­self is scary. I remem­ber Glo­ria Tay­lor, my ther­a­pist, telling me to “Spend 6 months not know­ing.†I really freaked out over that one. I wasn’t sure how to approach life in a state of “not knowing.â€

What I’ve come to under­stand is that, even in “not know­ing,†a part of me does know. I know what’s up for most peo­ple, and I know what’s up for me, most of the time, and with fair accuracy.

What I’ve real­ized is that know­ing some­thing doesn’t change anything.

What I mean is, I might have an insight about myself or another, and it might even be accu­rate. The other per­son, upon hear­ing it, might respond, “Yes! That’s exactly what’s up for me!†Now, from an ego per­spec­tive, I might get quite full of myself and con­grat­u­late myself for my wis­dom and insight. The prob­lem is this. Know­ing what I know, and stat­ing it, has no effect on the actual sit­u­a­tion.

My per­cep­tions, insights and intel­li­gence are only about me. When, for exam­ple, I write some­thing about Dar­bella, I am not describ­ing her. I am describ­ing my ver­sion of my Dar­bella story. In a sense, you learn about me, not about her.

Empti­ness requires that I let go of cling­ing to my beliefs—or bet­ter, to the right­ness of my beliefs. Empti­ness requires that I under­stand that how I see the world is how I see the world, and noth­ing more. Empti­ness is let­ting go of the need to get oth­ers to agree with me. Empti­ness is liv­ing in the ambi­gu­ity of know­ing with­out knowing.

As soon as I think you need to change some­thing so I can be happy, I am in deep trou­ble. Empti­ness is this: I can let go of think­ing that the world is sup­posed to coöper­ate in a “make me happy by agree­ing with me†project. I can let go of think­ing I have all the answers, I can let go of valu­ing my judg­ments (instead, I can just have them), and be open to per­ceiv­ing the sit­u­a­tion at hand, while notic­ing my fil­ters, prej­u­dices, or pat solutions.

Tall order.

The Zen Teacher offered the scholar some­thing precious—compassionate dia­logue. In order to thus engage with some­one, I have to be will­ing to sus­pend my ego-driven search for the right answer. Most peo­ple waste their lives in search of this illu­sive ideal—the right part­ner, the right reli­gion or belief (philo­soph­i­cal) sys­tem (actu­ally the same thing…) the right polit­i­cal party, the right approach to self and others.

At the end of the day, all I can know is how I choose to act in this moment.

The Zen Teacher and the scholar met over tea, and in that moment, each had the oppor­tu­nity to open up by let­ting go. Each had some­thing of him­self to share; each had some­thing to hear and to learn of the other. The scholar blocked his side of the oppor­tu­nity by pre­sent­ing what he knew, as opposed to let­ting the Teacher see who he was, in that moment. The Teacher did not blame, crit­i­cize or judge. He poured tea, and when asked, explained his actions, with­out ran­cour or judgment.

Let­ting go of the sto­ries we hide behind is the work of a life­time. Trust and patience are required. And open­ness. More on this as we go along.