Chapter 8: I Understand
In a lifetime there are always a few times a person suddenly says: I understand.
Some are very small. A problem you puzzled over all evening, and the next morning, brushing your teeth, you suddenly know how to do it. Some are bigger. You quarreled with someone for many years, and one day, looking at his back, you suddenly understand why he was like that all those years; something inside loosens, and your eyes go wet. And some you can’t put a name to: a very ordinary afternoon, sitting by the window, watching the light move slowly across the table, and suddenly something comes undone, as if a fist clenched all along had opened by itself. In that moment you haven’t worked out any principle; you only know: this is how it is, it has always been like this.
These “I understand”s are all real. They come like a flash of lightning and light up a great stretch; the days after really are different.
But people have many other designs on “understanding.”
Some keep searching. They have read many books, attended many courses, been to many places, followed many teachers. With every new book there is a little hope: perhaps this is the one; when I’ve finished it I will understand completely, and never feel bad again, never be muddled again. They finish it and seem to understand a little; a few days later it is not enough, and they go to find the next one.
Some said very early: I saw through it all long ago. People, well, they’re all out for themselves; the things of this world are all the same old story. They say it lightly, as if nothing mattered. But this “I saw through it” is often a wall: having seen through it, you won’t be fooled again, won’t be hurt again, won’t hope for nothing again.
Some, once they understand a little, can’t help saying so. At dinner, hearing someone fret over a small matter, he smiles to himself and says: that’s attachment; just let it go and you’ll be fine. The other is taken aback and doesn’t answer. He feels a little satisfied, and a little lonely: they don’t get it.
Some are afraid they don’t understand. Seeing others talk of very deep things with shining eyes, and not quite following, they panic: am I too stupid? Will I spend my whole life in a muddle like this? If I die without understanding, will I have lived for nothing?
And some, having understood once, keep searching for that once. One day, sitting still, they suddenly felt luminous all over, the heart transparently empty, and thought, “this is it!” In the days after, every time they sit down they want to find that moment again; finding it, they rejoice; not finding it, they are dejected, as if that moment were a key, and losing it, the door had shut again.
So many shapes—searching, saying they have seen through it, not able to help saying so, fearing they don’t understand, chasing that moment—and in them there are often two things.
One is wanting to be safe at last. Having understood, you have arrived somewhere and will never be knocked down again: feeling bad can’t hurt me, change can’t frighten me, others can’t fool me. As if understanding were a walled city: pass through the gate, shut it, and however chaotic it is outside, it has nothing to do with me.
The other is wanting to be a little higher. Those who understand stand a little higher, see a little further, are a bit more than those still in their muddle. Few will admit this, but it hides in “they don’t get it,” in that smile at the dinner table, in the lightness of “I saw through it all long ago.”
Put the two together, and they meet that old fear: the fear that I am not. The fear that to live a lifetime in a muddle is as good as not having lived; that not understanding a bit more than others means being drowned in the crowd, nothing at all.
In “I understand” there is often an assumption: understanding is a door. Through this door, a person reaches the other side and is from then on an understanding person, safe, and a little higher; not through it, he is still on this side, in the muddle, not enough.
First: does understanding count? It does.
For many years a voice has been scolding you, “you’re no good, you’re worthless”; one day on a bus that voice starts up again, and suddenly you see: it is only a voice, sounding like the horns outside, and it is not simply me. Having seen it, the voice doesn’t disappear, but you don’t believe it so much. This little less believing spares a person a great deal of suffering.
Only, understanding, like seeing, comes and also goes.
After a while you are muddled again. The voice wraps round you again, as tightly as before. That opened fist has clenched again, you don’t know when. And you panic: didn’t I understand already? How have I gone back? Did that moment not count at all?
That moment counts. Only it is not a certificate, to be hung on the wall once gained and never fall off for the rest of your life; it is something that happens: it happens, it passes, it will happen again, and may not happen for a long time. Some days are clear, some blurred; some people understand like that a few times in a lifetime, some never once, and live a perfectly good life all the same.
What changed in that moment?
Before understanding, a person was being. On the nights the voice scolded hardest, the person was being too, not a bit less than later. Understanding did not make this one time begin to be, nor make it a bit more being; yet this time of understanding really does change what comes after: a bit less suffering, a bit more ease. Understanding itself is a thing that happens at a particular moment; that day there were horns outside the bus; like the horns that day, it is being.
Look at this in two layers.
The first layer: being does not wait for understanding.
The night a person sleeps soundly, understanding nothing, the quilt rises and falls all the same. A tree of blossom deep in the mountains opens and falls without anyone seeing it, without anyone understanding it; it has blossomed all the same. Someone who farmed all his life never once thought about the word “being”; with a hoe on his shoulder he was being, tending the stove he was being, lying in a sickbed he was being. Understanding is a later time of being; the time that is understood was being long before.
That fear, “if I die without understanding, I will have lived for nothing,” comes to nothing. Not one day of those years lived in a muddle was being for nothing.
The second layer is harder: understanding itself is inside too.
People always feel that understanding is seeing a thing clearly from outside: standing somewhere a little higher, seeing right through what lies below. But in the moment understanding happens, where does a person stand? Still on the bus, still by the window, still brushing teeth. Understanding has not taken anyone outside being; it is a brightening that rises within being. Recognized, being has one more brightening in it; not recognized, being has no such brightening, yet being is not a bit less.
Being does not wait to be recognized; recognizing, too, is within being.
The first half loosens the fear that “if I don’t understand, it doesn’t count.” The second half loosens something better hidden: having understood, I am higher; having understood, I am safe.
Understanding is not higher. It is in the same place, the same time, as the horns outside the bus that day, the light falling outside the window, the person fretting over small things at the dinner table. Nor has understanding taken anyone into a walled city with its gate shut. There is no such city, and no gate. After understanding, feeling bad will come all the same, change will come all the same, people will be fooled and hurt all the same; understanding only means that when these come, there is a bit less of the panic of “I shouldn’t be like this.”
The latter layer is even harder to see than the former.
After that moment by the window, someone squeezes onto the subway the next morning and, looking at the people in the carriage scrolling their phones, dozing, frowning, feels a very light thought float up: they are still dreaming.
The moment this thought comes up, there is one more thing in the carriage: a me who has seen clearly, and a carriage full of them who have not. A higher position, looking at lower people. Yesterday’s moment was plainly a loosening; now there is gripping again, only this time what is gripped is something more respectable: I understand, they don’t.
“Recognizing, too, is within being” removes exactly this position. Recognized, being; not recognized, being; recognized then forgotten, muddled again, still being. That person scrolling the phone is not a bit less being than that moment by the window. Using understanding to rank high and low is like using “I can breathe” to compete over who is more alive.
Look one layer further down: why do people want so much to understand? Because what the heart owns is the clear-headed me: the one who sees through things, who doesn’t panic, who understands everything. The muddled one, the panicked one, the one scolded by a voice until he can’t lift his head, a person won’t own; he treats it only as the one not yet awake, waiting to be rescued. The moment he won’t own it, there are two: an understanding me waiting ahead, a muddled me enduring here. The days become a road hurrying from this one to that one: understanding once, you think you’ve arrived; muddled once, you fall back; up and down, more tiring than never having understood at all.
But when you are muddled, the muddle is you. It is not an understanding you with eyes temporarily covered; it is that this moment, this blur in which nothing is clear, is you. In the moment of understanding, understanding is you; that brightening on the bus is you; the next day, wrapped again in that voice, the one wrapped is you too. There is no always-understanding you standing behind, waiting for this muddled one to catch up. Understanding doesn’t make you a bit more; muddle doesn’t make you a bit less. That door was put up by one sentence: “the muddled one doesn’t count”; while that sentence stands, someone stands outside the door wanting in; but on both sides of the door is this place itself.
There is an even higher hat, called “no-self.”
Some practice for many years and finally say: I no longer have a self. They say it very calmly, yet those listening always feel something is off. When that “selfless” one speaks to others, there is often a touch of pity in it: you are still attached, you still have a self. The hat of “no-self” is worn on the same head; the “I” is not a bit less, it has only changed into nicer clothes and gone to stand somewhere a little higher.
The “I” never needed eliminating. It is the voice that being speaks in this place: hungry, it says “I’m hungry”; wrong, it says “I was wrong”; called, it says “here.” What is extra is not this voice, but the master who thinks he stands behind this voice holding everything; and also the new master who thinks he has eliminated the master and stands higher still.
Then what of practice? All those people sitting still, chanting, reading, examining themselves: was it all for nothing?
Not for nothing. Sitting still can make a person a bit less flustered, reading can let him see what he couldn’t see before, self-examination can keep him from making the same mistake next time. All this really happens in this place, with its real consequences.
Only, what they accomplish are matters within the days. What they change are the days: less flustered, more at ease, seeing more clearly. They are not building a ladder for a person to climb from “not being” up to “being”; nor earning a qualification so that being will finally accept this person. Being has never been waiting at the top of a ladder.
To turn it round and say, “since being doesn’t depend on practice, there’s no need to practice,” is to set up a new rule: practice is forbidden. Some sit still, some read, some cook, farm, bring up children. The moment of practicing is being; the moment of not practicing is being too. None of them is the key to the door, because there was never a door.
That one forever looking for the next book: this moment of looking is already being; searching his whole life, not one day of that life was spent outside the door. Whether he goes on reading or stops, no book opens a door for him; there never was a door.
Understanding and knowing are not the same thing.
Knowing water boils at a hundred degrees, knowing it will rain tomorrow, knowing someone’s birthday: knowing, you have one more thing in hand. Knowledge can be taught, passed on, written in books, examined.
Understanding is more like something else: recognizing an old friend in the street. In that moment of recognizing, you have not learned one more fact about him; a face already familiar has risen out of the crowd.
Understanding being is more like recognizing than knowing. Having recognized being, you can’t say you know anything more than before; only, that thing so familiar it could not be seen has risen into view. So no one can teach anyone what being is, just as no one can teach anyone to recognize a face already familiar. What this book can do is very little: spread out those few “I”s one by one and look at them: the “I” that thinks it stands at the very front, the “I” that thinks it must guard an identity, the “I” that thinks it must qualify to deserve, the “I” that thinks it must first feel all right to count, the “I” that thinks it must grip time. They are not blocking anything; being is not behind them, waiting to be uncovered. Spread out or not, being is no more and no less. Once they are moved aside, whether it is recognized is a matter for the reader’s own place. Not recognized, it is being all the same.
Nor do these words ask to be believed. To believe is to take a sentence, put it in your heart, and treat it as true. If “being does not wait to be recognized” and “recognizing, too, is within being” were taken as a creed, they would become a new stone, to be gripped and recited whenever panic comes. Better to try for yourself: look for the one standing behind everything holding being, look for the ground that holds being up, look for an outside of being, and see whether you can find them. If you find them, these words are wrong. If you can’t, that moment of not finding is more solid than any sentence believed.
Understanding has one last hiding place.
Many, understanding deeply, say: thoughts come and go, feelings come and go, the body is born and dies, but one thing neither comes nor goes, and that is the “knowing” that knows all this. It is like a lamp always lit; everything comes and goes in its light, while it does not move, is not born, does not perish. Some call it awareness, some the original mind, some pure awareness, and some simply call it emptiness. Find it, and you have found the final thing to rely on.
This step goes very deep, and comes very naturally. Everything before has been taken apart: no master standing behind, no ground, no doorway. This one thing remains, and it seems at last it can be leaned on.
But when was this “always-lit knowing” found?
On some afternoon, in some sitting, at some moment when things suddenly went quiet. The moment it was found is a thing that happened; the while it shines is a thing happening; the sentence calling it “neither coming nor going” is also a sentence happening now. On the night of deep sleep, is it lit? In those first months after birth, knowing nothing, is it lit? People say it is always lit, but the one saying so is always this awake, knowing while.
Being does not wait for this lamp. The lamp lit, being; the lamp out, being. When that tree of blossom deep in the mountains opened, no lamp shone on it, and it opened all the same.
So awareness is real; that clear knowing is a very bright shape this place can take, and it can change a person’s days. But it is not the root of being, not the last thing that holds everything up. It is one time of being too: it brightens, dims, comes, goes, and slowly blurs as a person grows old. To take it as the final thing to rely on is to set up, once again, something unmoving behind being.
Emptiness is the same. Those who say “everything is empty” have sometimes seen something true: no thing sits there alone and forever unchanged. But say it often enough, and emptiness becomes a new place, and people hide in it: it’s all empty, so nothing matters. The one who hides in emptiness stands at the highest point; emptiness has become the last card in his hand.
Being is not emptiness. The flower in bloom is the flower in bloom; the rice is hot; the hand being held is warm. Nothing there stays unchanged, and nothing there is false. Every time is solidly being, and changes away, time after time.
Grasp to the very end, and nothing is left in your hand that you could point to and say, “this is it.” Not because the grasp came up empty, but because being was never something that could be grasped. Grasp to the very end, and it is still this moment, happening.
Flowers and birds never say “I understand,” and have never failed to understand.
A tree of blossom deep in the mountains opens and falls; it doesn’t understand that it is blossoming, and doesn’t need to. Its blossoming is blossoming itself, not a bit less than the flowers people see and write into poems.
A bird never knows it is flying. It doesn’t know how the wind holds its wings up, doesn’t know where the south is, yet it flies perfectly well, and gets there.
A tree doesn’t know what light is, yet its leaves keep turning toward the side where the light is. It has not recognized light; light falls on it, and it grows.
Of all these beings, not one first recognized being and only then was. Recognizing is something that can happen in this place called a person, and a very good thing; but it is an extra brightening within being, not a ticket of admission to being. A tree that has never recognized anything and a person of the greatest awakening are not a bit different in being.
The history books say that in a certain year a certain man “discovered” a continent. People had long lived on that land, for thousands, tens of thousands of years, farming, hunting, bearing children, burying their old, singing their songs. The so-called discovery was only another group’s eyes falling there for the first time. The year it was seen was a great event for those who saw; for the land, it was just another year.
People understanding being is like this too: a great event for the person, for being just another time.
On the evening of understanding, a person may still quarrel with family over who washes the dishes, say something harsh, and watch the other turn, go into the room, and shut the door. Standing in the kitchen, the tap still running. That moment by the window was real; this harsh sentence is real too. Understanding did not block the anger for him, nor take the words back for him. After understanding, a person still fears, still hurts, still says the wrong thing, and still has to learn things one by one: how to speak, how to apologize, how to get the dishes washed.
He turns off the tap and washes the dishes. After a while he goes over and knocks on that door.
Having understood, people will still want. The one who wants, still wants; the thing that can’t be put down, still can’t be put down. Understanding is not a pair of pliers that clamps wanting so that a person stops wanting; it can’t control wanting, and isn’t responsible for controlling it. If someone reading this far says to himself, “I understand all this, but I still want,” he is telling the truth. This layer will be taken up on its own later.
Of these eight “I”s, not one first stood outside and was later invited in. That foremost position each thought it had to occupy was always empty; each was always already inside.
Being does not wait for me to take my place: the “I” always arrives afterward, and that calling again and again is not needed. Being does not wait for me to find the real me: each one found is another time happening, and there is nothing to lose. Being does not wait for me to qualify: every time is full, cannot be taken away, cannot collapse. Being does not wait for me to get better: this one now is not a draft, and becoming is not a ladder. Being does not wait for me to feel all right: the day of feeling bad is a whole day too. Being does not wait for me to work things out, nor for me to grip time: I have never for a moment left now. Being does not wait for me to let go: the doorway is inside the door too, and happening never waits for approval. Nor does being wait for me to come to understand: understanding is one time of being, and not understanding is too; the one who understands is not higher.
The “I” has not been taken apart. It is still here, still gets hungry, calls out, fears, thinks, understands, gets muddled again, and still wakes every morning with “I want to sleep a bit more” the first thing to come up. Only, it never needed to stand at the very front, vouching for being. The me who has taken its place and the me who hasn’t, the qualified and the unqualified, the one feeling bad, the one who understands, the muddled one: each, when it comes, is wholly me; none is a stand-in for another.
Being is being. It does not wait for me to take my place, does not wait for me to be good enough, does not wait for me to get better, does not wait for me to feel all right, does not wait for me to work things out, does not wait for me to let go, and does not wait for me to come to understand. It is by itself, moving by itself. I am just the shape it is moving into now.