What Does It Mean to Experience the Unknown?

As long as we have subtle mental grasping, as long as we are trying to understand what a koan means and thereby trying to figure things out or wishing the experience to be different from what is—that is, as you meditate, you are hoping that somehow this meditation will lead you to something other than what is—all of this is grasping. If you can just put aside all that mental grasping and then ask this question—“If all things return to one, where does the one return?”—then what happens is we are experiencing the unknown. 

Although I say it is the experience of the unknown, it isn’t exactly an experience, because experience usually has an objective quality. That is, you are experiencing something. For example, you experience the taste of an apple. Or you experience travel to different parts of Asia—to China, Japan, Korea, or Europe. Generally, when you say experience, you’re experiencing something, an object. However, this experience of the unknown does not have any objective quality in it. So you cannot even say “experience,” because there is no beginning and there’s no ending. 

When you are walking into “the experience of the unknown,” where does that experience start and where does that experience end? 

There is no beginning point and there is no ending point. It is unlimited and unborn. It is not something that you can cause. You cannot just practice hard and try hard to arrive at the unknown, because all the effort you make is usually trying to get to something that you know—to the known. Whatever the conceptualization of the Buddha, enlightenment, or nirvana is, insofar as you are hanging on to any idea and hoping that you are somehow turning that idea into reality, all of that is not nirvana, because you are assuming that unconditional freedom can be caused. But it’s a causeless freedom. 

So no matter how much effort we put in, that effort is not going to cause us to experience unconditional freedom, because unconditional freedom is our true nature. We already have it. 

That’s why you have already arrived at the destination, and that’s why you cannot try to arrive at the destination. 

It’s like somebody trying to get to New York City by saying to people around Grand Central in New York, “Oh, I want to go to New York. I heard that it takes many, many years to get there, and a lot of energy and money. What can I do?” There’s nothing you can do to arrive in New York, because you are already there. 

Likewise, it’s like silence. You cannot try hard to create silence. You can create music that has a form and shape. However, silence, the underlying reality of all sound, has no cause. You cannot try hard to create silence. 

So this is the mystery of our practice. In the beginning, we think that somehow we have to make a lot of effort. We have to trust in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha. We have to learn the many, many great teachings of our teachers. Then we realize at the end that whatever we’ve been hoping to obtain has always been in our own pocket.