So,
Today I want to share with you a story that I heard early in my Vipassana practice.
There was a Korean Zen master,
Sangsen,
Was his name,
Sangsen,
And he came to the United States to teach Zen,
But Sangsen's English was not very good and he couldn't get a teaching gig.
So he got a job at a laundromat repairing the machines.
This laundromat was near Brown University in Rhode Island.
And so some of the professors who knew of Sangsen would send their students to the laundromat to learn Zen.
And some of those students are Vipassana teachers,
Like sort of the teachers that taught me.
And so you have to imagine kind of this stately Korean man,
You know,
Kind of wearing overalls to maintain these machines.
And he was teaching Zen within like kind of in a dramatic way in broken English.
And he would say,
Like his teaching was,
Who am I?
Who am I?
This is how he would say it.
And then there would be this pregnant pause.
And he would answer his own question,
Don't know,
Don't know.
Who am I?
Don't know.
So Sangsen's teaching of the don't know mind and the Buddhist teaching of not self,
They point to the same liberation.
The don't know mind is not ignorance or confusion.
It's the mind before thinking,
The mind before identity,
Before concepts,
Before emotions.
It's the mind that directly experiences things as they are.
Or as Brian pointed out,
Our experiences are not ourselves.
Our experiences are not ourselves.
Let that rest for just a minute.
The Buddha taught that what we call self is a process,
A process happening in the body,
A collection of feelings and perceptions and mental formations like views and consciousness,
Awareness,
All arising and passing away.
That's the process that all of us are in.
And the moment that we think,
I am this,
I know that,
Boom,
We create separation.
We draw a line between the self and the world,
The subject and the object.
But if we drop our opinions about who we are,
What others are,
What should or shouldn't be,
What remains?
Just this,
Right?
Just sitting,
Just breathing,
Just sound,
Just seeing.
Who am I?
Don't know.
This is not self in its living form.
Not a philosophical idea,
But a direct experience.
There's just awareness,
No owner,
No controller,
Just awareness.
And when we practice don't know,
We're actually enacting not self in real time.
And here's the rub,
You know,
The thinking mind wants to know,
Who am I?
What's happening?
Let me figure it out,
Right?
The don't know mind simply is experiencing just this,
Just this,
Just sitting,
Just here.
And in the immediacy of just here,
There's no subject,
There's no object.
Hearing,
Touching,
Breathing,
Experiencing.
I'm really appreciating the reflections that our sangha members are bringing to this investigation during our period of reflection.
The way in which we're seeing how the thinking mind likes to complicate these sort of kind of simple teachings.
You know,
Tripping over the concept of not self instead of just asking the question,
Who am I?
Don't know.
And Sung Sen didn't mean that there is some hidden identity,
You know,
Waiting to be found.
He was talking about the self that is free of self,
Which is a mind that doesn't cling,
A mind that's not fixating,
A mind that's not grasping.
Howard shared these words from the Buddha,
Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as I and mine.
And this core idea is particular to the five aggregates that Lily alluded to a couple weeks ago.
The five aggregates are the elements contained in this process of being a human being.
The element of form,
So the body,
Feelings,
How we categorize liking,
Not liking,
Perception,
Mental formation,
And consciousness.
The five aggregates,
Again,
Body,
Feelings,
Perception,
Mental formations,
And consciousness.
This is the process that we're in as a human being.
These are the five aggregates.
And the Buddha taught that these components,
Which we mistakenly identify as our self,
Quite often,
Right?
They're impermanent and a source of suffering when we cling to them,
When we cling to them.
So the phrase,
Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as I or mine serves as an instruction to observe the impermanent nature of all phenomena.
I mentioned last week the saying from Joseph Goldstein,
Empty phenomena rolling on.
Empty phenomena rolling on.
That is life's experiences.
Empty of a permanent,
Independent self.
So when we live from don't know mind,
We are kind of becoming like a mirror.
And a mirror reflects what's in front of it.
That's all.
So if a rose appears,
It shows a rose.
And if a pile of trash appears,
It shows a pile of trash.
The mirror doesn't try to hold on to the rose or push away the garbage.
It doesn't say,
I like this and I hate this.
When our mind is functioning like a mirror,
We're living from not self.
In our daily life,
The self is constantly evaluating.
I like this,
I don't like this,
I want this,
I fear that.
Preferences,
These are preferences.
They're habits of grasping and rejecting.
That's all.
And those habits of grasping and rejecting create suffering.
I want this to happen,
I don't want this to happen.
But the mirror mind,
The don't know mind,
Doesn't interfere.
It simply reflects things as they are.
Let's say that someone criticizes you.
I live with a teenager,
So I hear a lot of criticism.
And so what happens is the mind immediately contracts.
And then there's the story,
The feeling.
I feel hurt,
I'm hurt,
I'm angry,
They're wrong.
And all this is happening within seconds.
But when I access the don't know mind,
The mirror mind,
What's happening,
What's reflected is there is a sound.
Of a teenage voice that reaches the ear.
And then there's a feeling that arises.
And then there's tightness that appears in the chest.
That's the direct experience.
That's what's happening.
That's it.
Nothing added.
And when we can see this clearly,
There's no need to suppress the reaction or justify it.
We just see it.
And in that seeing,
The eye that wants to fight and defend,
It kind of loses steam like right in the moment when we can see it.
So there's then wise responses available.
And maybe that response is to listen.
And maybe it's walking away.
And maybe it's speaking truthfully.
But the response is arising from clarity.
Not the ego.
Not the I,
The me,
The mind.
And that's wisdom functioning right then as compassion.
So this is our practice.
To practice resting in what we don't know.
To let go of needing to be right.
To let go of needing to be someone,
You know.
When we drop our opinions,
When we stop trying to control the story,
Something opens.
And that's the don't know mind.
The Buddha called this not self,
Anatta.
It doesn't mean that nothing matters.
It means we stop taking everything so personally.
We let the world move through us.
Thoughts and feelings and joy and pain.
Us in the world and the world in us.
Without building a house around it.
So as you go about your day,
Remember you don't need to fix yourself.
You don't need to figure everything out.
Just return again and again to what's here.
Open and curious and alive.
Just this.
Just now.
Just don't know.
Not self is not a loss.
It's freedom.
So thank you.
