Dogen: “Not knowing is most intimate.” July 5, 1987

Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, explains the story of Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan. One master says, “Not knowing is most intimate.”

Dogen’s question: if we are already Buddha nature — if enlightenment is our essence — then why do we need to seek it?

When Dogen returned to Japan, he founded the Soto school and taught Shikantaza — just sitting. This practice, Lola explains, is single-minded meditation without striving or grasping — simply allowing truth to reveal itself.

Meditation, explains Lola, is about resting in awareness, with nothing held back. The nature of mind. It’s both the source of our bondage and the key to our liberation. We must move beyond the “content” of the mind — our thoughts, dreams, and desires — to see mind itself, the clear space in which everything appears.

No-mind is not the absence of awareness but awareness without clutter. It is the crystal-clear state when the activity of thinking subsides.

We need to observe carefully: subject and object, thinker and thought, self and world. As one sees how all phenomena are like dreams, the sense of self begins to dissolve. Awakening brings clarity and wonder — colors seem brighter, the world more alive, even rocks appear to breathe.

Lola warns that the ego can cling to enlightenment experiences. The final task, she says, is to “let go of the remedy” — to release attachment to spiritual methods once they’ve served their purpose. Like the five men carrying a boat instead of realizing they’ve already crossed the river.

The teachings from Rinzai Zen are about the four positions in the relationship between ego and True Self, host and guest, questioner and answerer.

Enlightenment isn’t somewhere else to reach. It’s here, now, in the clear seeing that truth is.

July 5, 1987