Jun Po Roshi (Interview Archive)
Once you've grasped this much, the next question follows: now that I don't know a not-knowing, how do I bring the body into it? So I'll ask you who you are, and I want you to answer, "I don't know," straight from the ego. Who are you? Make a fist and say it. Who are you? I don't know. Feel the psyche move as you say it. Who are you? I don't know. Then let's cut the head off the beast, drop the eye, and answer from the heart instead. Who are you? I don't know. Feel the contraction and then the release. You can actually sense the ego working in there. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We play with it like a game until the body is part of the whole thing.
After that I ask, "Alright, you've had the experience. Can you feel the difference?" And the person says, "Yes, I can feel it, physically, emotionally, philosophically, the difference in how I'm receiving." Good. Now, ready? Show me who you are. One more question first. Give me a single adjective for who we are at this great depth. Not something that arrives and leaves, but who we are all the way down. Who am I? Who are we, deeper than the relative mind? And what usually comes back is silence.
If the silence lands, I'll ask, "How silent?" And then I'll push: how about deathly silent? That's the mind at the bottom. You've gone far enough that death is right here. You don't have to wait for it. At the root point of any living being, go deep enough into stillness and receptivity and you reach that. In Zen we call it dying on the cushion. We mean dropping into a stillness so complete the lights go out.
The joke of it is that you come back. It was the same with psychedelics for me. I'd die on the journey and then I'd be back, same nonsense as before. That's exactly why I went through the training, why I worked and worked to sort it out, so I could actually enter that state and stay in it on my own, without a substance carrying me there.
Once that happens, you can call it silent, timeless, empty. Fear may still come up, but the mind no longer reacts to it. From this view, fear turns into excitement and possibility, at least on the surface of the mind, once the realization is in place. So fear becomes opportunity rather than reflex. This depth of witnessing is vast, silent, fearless, present, aware, outside of time. That's it. And now you claim it as your own. This is who I am: I am vast. At this step I am silent. At this step I am fearless. Got it?