Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘In Zen we say, “Not knowing is most intimate.” Not-knowing should not be confused with ignorance. Not-knowing is not the removal of knowing but its deep reevaluation. Not-knowing means giving up on the idea that one could know in advance or once and for all, or that the knowledge of the past will suffice for the present and the future. Not-knowing is an indirect way of pointing toward a different kind of knowing that is nonconceptual and nonhabitual. A knowing that, instead, functions through attunement to an implicit order.

The word intuition comes to mind, and it has been used a lot in the Western translations of Zen texts. It points to contents of mind that arise contextually and in nonlinear ways. These intuitions come with the power of situational truth, a power the spiritually inclined feel should or even must be followed, while rationalists consider it, well, irrational. We come close to what a mind of not-knowing is like when we characterize it as a stream of intuitions. Once we stop repressing intuitions as irrational, we can ask how they arise and what they actually are.’ (from the Dewdrop)