Embracing the Unknown – the End of Suffering

By Munir Peter Reynolds

Here are two of the most iconic photographs of 2017.

The first shows a group of golfers pursuing their game in Washington, while across the river in Oregon a massive forest fire rages. Symbolically we may see many levels of meaning revealed here. Forest fire is an apt metaphor for the upheaval and dysfunction raging in nearly every human domain—politics, religion, energy, media, environment, agriculture, communications, etc. On the physical plane, natural disasters brought more than $300 billion in losses just to the US in 2017. We can’t seem to agree on what is happening, and what if anything can be done about it. Many stick their head in the sand and try not to look at the conflagration raging around us.

The second photograph captures the earth (the tiny blue dot at center right) taken from Saturn by the Cassini space probe more than 746 million miles away. Here we see yet another astonishing human technical achievement. We reach for the stars and literally go there through our increasingly superb technology. Along with these technical marvels of human capacity, we could include all human aspiration, including the music of Bach and Beethoven, the achievement of great athletes, progress toward sustainable agriculture, steady-state and local economies, and all aspiration to make a more just, vibrant and sustainable society and environment. We hold the keys to a bright and better world in the palm of our hands. We could even say that the “eye” looking at the earth from Saturn is still our own, only mediated by what we now call technology.

The photos open a window to unimaginable loss and dissolution right next to vast potential and capability. Both are our reality in the truly paradoxical human condition. We live, as it were, perched between utter destruction and creating heaven on earth. It’s the continual activity of mind to narrate, critique and obsess about “what is” that saps our energy and capacity, and to know truly what is ours to do. Can we find a way to live with these extremes without trying to resolve them or reach closure with our minds?

St. John of the Cross offered a possible remedy when he wrote, “In order to come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way you know not.”

How do we go by a way that we know not?

If we’re utterly honest with ourselves, everything that we think we know about ourselves or the world has been told or taught to us. We live in a world of concepts, right down to our name, our identification with the body, with the mind. All of it is in the realm of thought, which is static and has no access to the unknown.

We know that if we argue with “what is”, we are going to suffer. “What is” has no opposites. It happens beyond good and bad, right and wrong, caring and indifference. What we are seeing is the cost of this moment. This moment appears to come at a very high price. In order to view the earth from Saturn, we also have conflagration on earth. They go together in this moment.

What happens if we were to wholly accept the fact that we really don’t know anything about the reality we inhabit? The mind stops churning, we are brought up short, we become quiet. Not knowing robs us of our hubris. When we are humble and innocent, a new way of “not knowing” starts to open up and connects us to everything in a fresh and renewing way. Not knowing, not trying to reach closure or a sense or safety rooted in changing phenomena, opens us to a different state of consciousness.

Having the courage and strength to meet each moment as it is means we are not separating ourselves from the world by judging it or making demands it be different. It means we are no longer arguing with our inner and outer worlds. If we are not arguing with life we come upon a silence within that is not manufactured or grasped by the mind. This silence sustains us in meeting life moment to moment in wholeness. Silence is the the “knowledge we have not”, but not the kind of knowledge we expect or are used to.

Life is as it is, and we do not know how it will turn out. From this naked and innocent perspective, the sacred begins moving and having its way with us. Then the action we take is authentic and not reactive to what is going on around us … we take action that is ours to do, action that arises from the wholeness of the situation. We take action not with an end in sight but we are acting from the peace of our very being.

May we all have a peaceful and creative 2018, walking on the knife-edge of this moment in true humility, awe and possibility.