The "Don't Know" State of Mind

 

The teachings on “don’t know mind” are central to Zen Buddhism and can be of great usefulness to all of us.     

Don’t know mind is different from being confused or unable to make up your mind.  These are both effortful states in which I am striving hard to know something but still do not have knowledge.  Don’t know mind is not confused—when I am in this state, I’m perfectly clear on the fact that I don’t know and there is no confusion.  It’s not a case of being unable to make up my mind because I am not trying to make up my mind about anything—and so there is no struggle.  I am simply in a resting and a calm state of not knowing and being open to receiving what is going on around me without agenda. 

                This is foreign territory for most of us.   We want to know, we often say we know, we think we're supposed to know. There's all of this bias toward knowing. But very frequently we don't really know. And if we have grasped the teachings on don’t know mind, we can relax and totally accept the fact that we don't know and go from there. If we really live that, it changes everything.

When we are in this state of relaxed not knowing, we are open to new and potentially useful ways of looking at situations.  We can actually take in what people are saying and what is happening.  When we think we know, it blocks us. Thich Nhat Hanh has said that when we hear a teaching talk or study a reading, our only job is to remain open. 

“Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas.  If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct.  If it is not, we say it is incorrect.  In either case, we learn nothing.  …While reading or listening, don’t work too hard.  Be like the earth.  When the rain comes, the earth only has to open herself up to [receive] the rain.”   ---Thich Nhat Hanh, in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.

What we claim to know is often just what we have been taught to believe, what our friends believe, the way we were raised, or what “everyone knows.”  What are the chances you would have the same beliefs that you have now if you had been born in China, or Iran, or Ethiopia?  As long as we are convinced we know the truth, it becomes very hard to hear and genuinely consider things that differ from what we think we know.  Instead of listening in an open and receptive manner, we tend to immediately leap to defend our pre-existing beliefs. 

Not being in a hurry to achieve a state of “knowing” makes it possible to utilize the teachings on delaying judgement.  We tend to have the habit of immediately passing judgement on any new (or even old) idea we are exposed to and immediately either agree with it or disagree with it.  But there is a third options: we can instead decide to put off evaluating the new idea for a while and just focus on understanding what is actually is.  We choose to delay judgement as a strategy for approaching things.

Here is a useful story.  Suppose I am at a friend’s house for lunch and he has baked fresh bread in his bread machine.  I’ve never used a bread machine, and I’m intrigued.  As it turns out, my friend has two bread machines and is considering selling one of them:  would I be interested in a bread machine?  Maybe, but I’ve never had one and don’t really know anything about them.  So my friend says to me, “Just take it home with you for a week or two and try it out; if you like it, you can buy it and if not just bring it back.”  So I take it home with me.

This is exactly like holding a new idea in your mind—you are trying it out, neither having agreed with it (“bought it”) nor disagreed with it (“said no to it”).  There really is no pressure and nothing to argue about, justify, fight about, or defend.  My mind is in a relaxed state of openness and curiosity to find out about something, looking at it from all sides.  Before I can do a good job of evaluating an idea, it is first crucial to really have an accurate understanding of what it actually is.

                Occasionally, someone will say “But I get to really understand a new idea by arguing with it, by saying yes, but what about this problem and what about that problem…”  Essentially, the idea here is to “pick a fight” with an idea as a means of getting to know it better.  I find this approach gets in the way of really understanding what is being said.  We get so caught up in fault-finding and “winning the argument” that we forget to first make sure that we have understood the idea in front of us. 

Here is an analogy.  How well would the above approach work in getting to know a new person in my life: “I’ll get to know Sandy by picking a fight with her:  this will help to bring out and clarify her core beliefs as well as various aspects of her personality that may be hidden beneath the surface.”  So while having dinner in a restaurant on our first date, I pick one fight after another with her.  Is this a good way to get to know someone?  I think not, and it certainly would not make for a pleasant evening (or lend itself to the possibility of spending more time together in the future).

When the mind is in a relaxed state, creative solutions and profound revelations can come to the surface.  Yes, there is a need to gather information, but then give yourself quiet time for clarity to spontaneously arise without forcing.

Socrates knew the wisdom of this.  He said he knew very little and was wise only in that he knew he didn’t know much and he didn’t think he knew things that he really did not know.  The person who thinks he is an expert sees the world in front of him through the lens of his pre-existing beliefs and the problem solutions that he has learned for various types of problems in the past. 

Einstein once said that “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  Many times, that new level of consciousness is the direct result of an open, receptive, and nonthinking state of being.

 

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