Don't Know

REW's post today reminded me of not knowing. It's a prized state in zen: I remember how happy I was that the answer "Don't know" was acceptable, even correct, in many zen koan interviews.

Here's a snippet about "don't know mind" from Zen Master Wu Bong.

I have a sign up in my office that reads: "Stop thinking so much. Life isn't that simple."

Somehow these things are all related.

We are so pressured to know. To be experts. To always understand. To figure things out. To be authorities. To know what we want, what we think, what we feel, what we need. To know WHO we are (Very important! LOL!). To judge right and wrong, good and bad, like and don't like. Whew! It's exhausting.

This morning at Mysore practice, Volleyball Guy, who has been adjusting me with great care (so as not to hurt my left hamstring), finally asked me about it in words. Yup, he's been dealing with it for two days without ever having heard about it from me or talked about it with me. He could just see what was going on and responded accordingly.

At the end of practice, as I'm rolling up my mat, he says, "Your hamstring. On a scale of one to ten?" And I realize he's asking about pain, and I realize I still don't understand what I am feeling, or even if it's an injury at all, and I say, "I don't know." A couple of people laughed, and then someone said something else, so that was the end of our conversation. I wondered afterwards if he thought I was being evasive or perhaps just entirely out of touch with reality ;-) and for a second I felt like a dope for not knowing. For not being able to make something up to suit the question. But in the end I'm better off just being honest with my teacher, even if it makes me seem like a total dork.

What is my hamstring, on a scale of one to ten?
I'll see you tomorrow at practice.