A Riddle of Awakening
The riddle below might as well be a Zen koan. If you’re unfamiliar, koans (pronounced KOH-ON) are these little verbal devices used in Zen training (particularly Rinzai Zen I believe) to help practitioners short-circuit the thinking mind into a clear sighted vision of unfiltered Reality. A Zen term for such a vision is satori (another term I’ve heard is kenshō) - a brief experiential glimpse of enlightenment.
Here’s the riddle: When you say my name, you no longer have me. What am I?
Before scrolling down, if you haven’t heard this one before, you might venture a guess. Or you might just sit with the feeling of the question for a moment. (The visuals below were originally posted on my Instagram - link here)
What is it that,
when you say it,
you lose it?
By the act of speaking,
by saying the name of this thing,
it ceases to exist.
What is it?
The answer is silence.
When I say “silence” out loud,
I lose the Reality of silence.
I’m reminded of the first line
of the Tao Te Ching:
The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
This silent riddle articulates
the confounding nature of words.
Words are tools we use
to symbolize and represent
a wordless meaning.
But when we get stuck
on the words,
we lose the meaning.
We lose the Real thing.
The Real thing cannot be said.
It just is.
The Big Thing
cannot be said,
or had,
or understood,
because it is Everything.
I can’t get apart from it
to name it,
as much as I might
desire to do so.
I am it.
And it just is,
like silence.
This riddle is found within the pages of my recent book, The Will to Do Nothing (link to book here). If you’d like to take a deep dive into this sort of exploration into the unexplorable inner space, you might give it a read. I spend so much time on the topic of language because it is deeply embedded into our basic assumptions of who we are and of what life is. When life is founded completely in words, it is like reducing a three-dimensional experience down to two dimensions. Words are incredibly useful and fun tools (obviously I enjoy the use of words, or I wouldn’t be writing this), but they are tools. They can never accurately describe the Big Indescribable Thing.
Play with words to help you connect with others, but don’t try to fit Reality into the rules of grammar.
It doesn't fit.
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