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When are you ? Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Ten Zen Questions
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It’s spring time. At least, at home the crocuses and daffodils are in flower, but spring has yet to arrive at Maenllwyd. The hillside looks bleak as I drive into the muddy yard and drag my case and sleeping bag into the house, to find my designated bed space and see what job I’ve been allocated for the week.
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The others are arriving. I don’t like to talk but John insists we all sit round the fire and introduce ourselves before we go into silence. He tells us that the first thing is to arrive; to be here in the presence of the given, here and now. Over all these years this place has seeped into me. It feels as though it and I are part of the same arriving. I’m not separate from this old house, muddy yard, and the two great sycamore trees that I know so well. It’s odd to realise how much of oneself is not inside, but out there. I think of old people with failing memories who need their familiar places. Part of who they are remains in the walls, and tables, and steps that they see every day. So part of me is this house and this yard. I lay out my bed, my extra rugs, my few simple warm clothes, and get firmly back into the habit of not looking at anyone, and being mindful. Tonight a short sit and bed. Tomorrow the koan. ~ ———————————— ~ Day one, and my koan for the week is already proving more varied and interesting than it appeared at first sight. I chose it, sitting on a rock half way up the track, where there’s a view right down the valley. The words leapt out at me when John read out the list. I was worried that it was too close to my previous koan ‘There is no time. What is memory?”, and I might get bored, or learn nothing new. But leap it did, and I chose it. So here I sit, the first day, ready to begin asking “When are you?”. It’s obviously about time and self, I think, but I’ll just feel my way around the question before I work out what to do next. Thoughts shift around. I’m still settling in. I’m trying to be mindful. And, ah. This question promotes mindfulness of itself. As I’m sitting here, and thoughts come up that drag me away from the mindful present, they are mostly of the “I wonder if …”, or “I remember when …”, “I want …” variety. In their self-centredness, they remind me of the question “When are you?” and I’m propelled back both to the present and to the question. So far so good. I can work with this. There are three words. So how about tackling each in turn? (I faintly wonder whether I can really spend an entire week doing nothing but thinking about three words – and three very ordinary words at that!). But I’m being mindful. Don’t think about a whole week, it’ll only terrify you. Be here, now, and concentrate.
When? The whole of the first day I sit and watch the thoughts prompted by that simple first word: When? Memories arise. That holiday was years ago. Yes, but when? I realise I’m inventing a series of years and dates, and placing that holiday in position along it. I’m remembering what the builder said last Thursday, and visualising my diary with its whole structure of days and weeks, and the order in which things happen. Really the thought is happening now, isn’t it? I see myself at home in the kitchen. When was that? Do I mean when did the event I am remembering actually happen? Surely not, because I cannot remember it precisely. Indeed it’s probably an amalgam of many such times when I’ve stood in the same kitchen, doing similar tasks. So it’s impossible to say when it was by objective time. So I must mean when is the memory happening? I would say that it’s happening now, except that now’s already slid past. … “When” is very confusing. I must just keep at it. We sit. We walk in the yard. We carry out our jobs in silence, and eat our meals in the dusty refectory at the side of the house. I’m kitchen assistant. I carry the dishes mindfully, not looking up, placing them in front of people whose eyes I never meet. When? ~ ———————————— ~ It’s the second day. I’m settling into the place, into mindfulness, into really being here. The weather is fabulous: cold, frosty mornings when we’re up in the dark and out in the yard; clear, cold days with the palest blue sky and a watery sun. … I’m on my cushion. I’m going to move on. I’m going to tackle “are”. I feel “you”, or self, threatening to intrude, but I will stick to “are”. This seems a bit daft. What can I do with “are”? Are; am; to be. To be or not to be … of course, there’s a simpler meaning to this question, something like “When are you?” as opposed to “When are you not?”: something like “When do you exist?” as opposed to “When do you not exist?”. This is about being here and not being here; about being mindful and not being mindful; about when these different states happen. I can work with this. Right now I am mindful. I am sitting here and concentrating. When is this? I try to flip back and forth between being here and not being here, but I can’t. Whenever I am working on this koan I seem to be present. There is someone here doing the asking and it is. This is a familiar one, I realise. It’s just like asking whether I’m conscious now. Whenever I ask the question the answer seems to be yes. Whenever I am asking, I am. I stare into it for a while. And another long time. As the slow minutes tick by I get distracted into wondering when the bell will sound, how many more sessions it is before dinner, and thinking about a friend I should have rung last week. They are all self-related thoughts. So “I” was in them. Thinking about almost anything brings up a “me”. But I can see it’s all fiction. It’s all just thoughts whirling around an idea of me. Not yet. I’m not supposed to work on “you” yet. I’m still on “are”. I start on a new tack. If I’m asking when I am and when I am not, then I’d better be able to look into both of them and ask when they begin and end, when they happen. But I can’t. Every time I try to see when I am not, I fail. I can’t see myself not being. Hmmmm. OK. Let me try again. Can I somehow let go of myself and leap off into nothingness, so that I can know I wasn’t then, and then come back and know that I am again? It sounds worth trying. All I have to do is to cease being. I must throw myself into non-being. I must let go. It flickers. For a moment I seem not to be; not to be anything at all, gone. But in a flash I’m back, asking the question. Did I really disappear? When was that? I laugh. I don’t know. OK, try again, let go, reappear, and then ask when. I get this slippery sense that if only I had the courage, or the skill, or something …. then I’d be able to drop out of existence entirely and come back again, but it does not happen. Perhaps I am afraid that the me who comes back will not be the same one who disappeared. Indeed I know it will not. There’s something very peculiar about this. I begin to sense that I and the koan are inextricably linked. But I don’t understand the feeling. I keep working. Are. ~ ———————————— ~ We are all to have interviews, and this time they are not with John but with one of his trainee teachers called Jake, with John sitting by. I await my turn. The tap on the shoulder comes. I walk mindfully into the library and sit down with the two of them. Out it all comes. I burble on about what I’ve been doing, and throw in the odd joke about John, and we all laugh. “Do you have any questions?” Jake asks. I don’t. I feel rather stupid for not having any questions. I say “No” and just sit there. “What is it like having no questions?” he says, and I’m stumped. He repeats the question. “It’s just getting on with it.” I reply, and am dismissed. I’m all shaken up as I sit back on my cushion. I can think of so many much better things I should have said, and I can’t shake off thinking about them; such a pointless and stupid activity: wishing I’d done something different. I could have said, “Nothing. There’s nothing it’s ever like to be anything”. That seems to be the conclusion I’m coming to, but I wonder whether I really mean it. Since the science of consciousness is all about “What it’s like to be” something, then this claim would be rather serious! It makes me laugh. I wonder whether Jake realised how pertinent his question was. I could have said, “Dead”. I could have asked him all the questions I really want answers to, like, “ What is it that you know, and I don’t?” or even “When are you?” It’s pathetic. Stop it! I take a deep breath and get to work again. Are. ~ ———————————— ~ It’s day three. Somewhere out there in the rest of the world it’s Sunday. Forget that. Come on now. See the wooden floor, hear the sheep and the crackling of the wood stove, pay attention! Today you are going to take up the third word, “you”. I can already see that there are several branches to this one. I begin to explore. I’m going to ask who I am, look at myself, and then throw in the “when?”. This is fun. I have licence to think about myself. I remember when I was a little kid, with a big bandage on my arm from the operations I had on my hand. I see my parents’ house with its garden and garage and path. I imagine myself at home … but stop. When is all this? It’s both then and now, but I can’t pin either down. These are fictions. Horrible fictions. They aren’t real. They are just thoughts about a person bubbling up now, but what about now. Oh no. I can't bear that one again. I’m not going hunting for a now that I know I won’t find. So when are you? … There is someone asking the question, isn’t there? ~ ———————————— ~ This morning, after exercises in the yard, John said that everyone will tackle their koan in their own way; as gloomy or fun; as science or philosophy, as poetry or pain; but whichever it is we must not forget to move on. “Hold your koan” he said. This isn’t difficult. I am working hard and the koan does not leave me, at least not for long. I’m encouraged as we file into the hall to sit. Every day we get up in the cold dark and the sun slowly rises during that first hour’s meditation. Today we emerge from the meditation hall into a brilliant world of bright sun gleaming off a dense white hoarfrost that falls away down the mountainside into a rippling valley fog. Tears well up. I stare. When is this? … But I’ve plenty to do. If there’s someone asking the question then I can ask when that person is, can’t I? This is fun too. Sit down, ask the question; look into who’s asking and then ask, “when is this?” I was unprepared. It caught me unawares. ~ ———————————— ~ “When are you?” I’m the questioner asking the question. I turn back to ask the questioner “When are you?” and it’s the question asking me who’s asking the question and ….. It’s all gone wrong. The question is hovering right there in front of my face but I’m not sure whether I’m the question or the face. But anyway it’s not the face at all, it’s whatever lies behind the face. The question is staring into the space behind my face and is finding nothing but the question. It seems as though all my life there’s been a skin or a veil between the me inside here and the world I can see out there – not a real skin, obviously. Indeed I’ve no idea what I mean, but now it’s not there and I can sense something missing. The whole of my head is opened up. In fact there isn’t any head at all, or back to it. It’s as though I was looking in a mirror before, and now I’m not. There is no division. There is no back or front. No behind the mirror or in front of it, no inside or outside. The question is asking itself through me and I am …… I don’t know, but I’m skilled enough to see that this is an opportunity, and I could blow it. Don’t panic. You know what to do now. Remember the old Mahamudra teaching: to recognise and experience insight, and remain in the experience of non-elaboration. I don’t elaborate. The question keeps asking itself. The glass isn’t there. Everything is adrift but there’s something gloriously refreshing about it. John’s “refreshing taste of emptiness”? ~ ———————————— ~ I’m scared. The work goes on and sustains me, but if I reflect on it, as occasionally I do, in spite of the mindfulness, I can see that everything is falling apart. … ~ ———————————— ~ It’s the last day and I’m back on my cushion; same floor, same fire, same bleating of the sheep – or are they different sheep? Different bleats? No matter. To any of them I am going to say “When are you?” I begin. A bird shrieks out; a curlew I think. When are you? It’s obvious, and loud. The great sound was suddenly there; it lasted for a while (or I could later remember it as having lasted for a while); and then it was gone. I can perceive its temporal form, its sonic shape, but when was it? The fire is still crackling, as it does. When is that? I notice it’s one of those backwards threads again; the crackling’s been going on for some time but this me wasn’t listening to it; I was busy with the curlew sound. Do I ask “When are you?” of that unlistened-to crackling as well? I reason that I am supposed to be asking the experiences themselves when they are, so if I wasn’t experiencing it at the time then it doesn't count. So it began only when I noticed it. Yes, but when I noticed it I could already remember it having been going on, as though I, or someone, had been listening for a while. In that case I must ask when it was; but it was already a memory by the time I noticed it. Stop it! Stop it! It’s all right to think but this is getting you nowhere. Look! Listen! Watch! And I do. And I see. Each sound, or taste, or feel, or thought, has its own shape or form, its own way of being, but I can’t find any beginnings and ends. Just so long as I’m hearing or seeing it, then it is what it is; with this form in time and space. But they aren’t in time and space. It’s as though the notions of time and space arise within the things themselves and disappear when they disappear. It’s as though they persist only when I am conjuring them up – listening or watching for them – and when they stop existing I cannot say when or where they were. There is no more mirror; no distinction between self and the world. There is just this stuff springing up out of no-place and no-time, with no continuous someone to whom it appears. So what is this stuff and where is it coming from? I peer into the nothingness out of which it all seems to be manifesting itself. … Everything is like this. Everything, and I have no idea where it comes from – even right here in my own mindful experience. I look harder, as though straining to see into the cracks between the things will help. But as soon as I look I’m creating something, and it’s the uncreated I’m trying to look into. I conceive the notion that it’s time to leap into the source and disappear.
I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. The koan is still there. And I realise with some relief that it’s probably not going away. If everything else falls apart the question will just go on asking itself. If I fall apart, the koan will still be there. I’m ready. I feel as though I’m on the edge of a cliff and ready to throw myself off. Or it’s tinier than that. It’s more like the top of a flagpole, or a wobbly stick that I’m stupidly clinging to the top of. Go on. Jump. Jump. Let go. You know you’re just a fiction. There’s nothing to lose. Go on. But I cannot, or do not, or the whole idea was misguided. I am left, again, quivering at the edge, things happening in no place and no time, emerging out of nothing or something. I’m tired. ... Discuss this chapter at the Ten Zen Blog Back Home To Sue Blackmore's Web Site Back to Ten Zen Home Page created 28
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