Wisdom of the Unknown
Not knowing is most intimate.
Zen master Jizō
What is known is only relative to our position, to our experience. We think we know the colour of something, yet someone else sees it slightly differently. We think we know the speed of something, yet from a distant nebula, that speed appears entirely different. We think we know the view of the great Milky Way, yet we only see from one tiny perspective—and we are behind that perspective.
We assume we know something, yet behind that thing, there is not much of anything. We merely throw around ideas and live in a world coloured by the frames of our ideas. Thus, the wise remove the rose-coloured glasses to see unfiltered, embracing the wonder of the Great Unknown, the ineffable “I don’t know.” The greatest knowledge one can have is of the unknown.
Embracing the unknown goes beyond conception, expectation, and elaboration; beyond expansion and contraction; beyond preferences and ideas of right and wrong.
When we think we know something, we reduce it to a little box—a theory, an idea that makes us feel comfortable. We forsake the mystery for a false sense of security. However, when we don’t know, we remove the box, the walls, and the limitations. It becomes illimitable, free from concepts and free from our tendency toward complacency—our laziness that tries to place the numinous in a knowable box.
When we say, “I know something,” we reduce that thing to a concept in our mind. The conceptualisation of an experience reduces it to a mere memory, a stroke of syntax, a simple mark on the canvas to symbolise the abstract. This kind of knowledge requires walls and boundaries to fit into our understanding.
Wisdom, however, is like a leaf that falls and surrenders into the vast empty space of truth, like music moved by the sound of waves lapping against the rocks. It is recognising the pearl of a single grain of sand amongst innumerable shores, while truth moves like the wind—uncatchable, unseen—quietly blowing the leaf, blowing the wave. It is the space that has no end and cares nothing for our concepts of it. It is the ocean, vast and wide, holding all uncountable grains of sand within its womb. Truth plays a different game altogether, one that does not conform to our rules or expectations.
Do you remember that ball game? The one without end? The game where the rules change with every play, and the field stretches infinitely in all directions? It is the game of life, of hiding and seeking, of knowing and not knowing, where every question leads to more mystery and each answer dissolves into new possibilities. In this game, we are players and spectators, dancers and the dance, the field and the ball.
What did the ancient sages mean when they called the world an illusion? It is as simple as believing that we know something. When you give up that belief, what happens? The world becomes vast, mysterious, and full of ineffable grace. Your sense of self-importance is humbled and diminished to an astounded awe at everything that moves. No moment is the same, no path is taken for granted, no comfort is good enough to sink into and miss the opportunity to meet the Great Mystery in the ever-new here and now that contains every moment that was and every moment that will be.
When we open to the innocence of not knowing, we find humility, surrender, and a deep sense of trust. These qualities—humility, surrender, and trust—are crucial. It is said that if one does not tremble before the face of God, they have not truly seen it, for to behold the divine is to tremble, knowing that to truly know the divine is the end of knowledge and the dissolution of the individual knower. Like salt dissolving into the sea, like smoke dissipating into the open air—a disappearing act reveals that, in the realm of one reality, no other stands apart. As such, it is holy awe, divine rapture, and numinous annihilation. The mystic’s sight is forever changed by the insight of that which extends beyond flesh and bones, beyond clothes, and beyond the materiality of things.
It can, of course, bring anxiety, for with nothing to hold, where do we stand? To discover the infinitude of the mind can be destabilising—even terrifying. This is why it is wise to go slow, to go with the guidance of a teacher and calm yourself in the trust of surrender. At the end of the day, all is falling into the next, and one day we will realise that free fall is all there ever was—but in it lies the true ground, in it lies our freedom. Our opportunity here is to begin to find our stability there, our peace and our consolation there, for even though it is scary to be out in the open, when we learn to open towards it, we find that rather than our demise, it is our home.
To enter the temple of eternity, one must become one. One transcends the individual identity to find unity and infinity in diversity. To recognise this, you need humility. You also need the ability to surrender. Pure surrender allows perfect trust. Perfect trust is pure surrender. These two go hand in hand, like the left and right wings of a bird that flies peacefully through open skies. You cannot practise one without the other.
So, embrace the “I don’t know.”
What is left over?
It is a sense of knowing.
Knowing is not knowledge.
We can say we don’t know and find a knowing underneath. It is a knowing that does not know an object but knows itself. It rests in itself. It is a knowing that is free of knowledge. When you let go of all you know, there it is—the essential being, the Great Mystery. That is the presence of awareness. You only really touch it when you empty the cup of your imaginings, your ideas and knowledge.
Know that you know nothing, that you could have it all entirely and completely upside-down.
Excerpt from Walking the Forest Path Volume 1, available in early 2025.
